From the very beginning, O
Brother, Where Art Thou? blurs the line between realism and antirealism,
and straddles it throughout the rest of the run time. This is reinforced by the
sepia-tinted color scheme which makes everything appear washed out; already an artificial
image of Depression-era Mississippi is born. Obviously reality was not sepia
tone back in the 1930s, our brains just work such that after so much exposure
to the films and photography of the era with natural sepia tint that the washed
out coloration primes thoughts of the era when viewed in a modern context (a
useful trick for instantaneously transporting your audience from one time and
space to another).
O Brother follows
three chain gang members, Everett, Pete, and Delmar, and picks up right as the
trio escape from their captivity and hightail it out on the railways. Abetting
their initial escape is a blind old man who says he works for “no man” and has “no name” but provides
them with a prophecy directly linked to the trio’s extant goal of finding the
fortune Everett left buried by his house prior to his incarceration. Just one
of the many references scattered throughout the film to Homer’s Odyssey, the blind old man relaying a
prophecy is the first driving example of antirealism in the film.
He predicts
that they will find a treasure, but not the one they seek, and see many great
things including a cow on a roof. It might not seem so spectacular, but the
absurdity of the image itself is enough waver our acceptance of reality.
Everett himself, easily the most level-headed of the bunch, tries to explain
the man’s prophecy as a psychic manifestation that compensates for the man’s
loss of vision. Already our characters have accepted the fantastical.
The rest of the movie can be summed as a series of random
encounters as the trio journeys through the Mississippi countryside to reach
the buried treasure before it becomes lost forever in an impending flood.
Working within a deadline of only a few days, the trio’s path is constantly
being impeded by law enforcement and other colorful characters scattered along
the highways, towns, and backwoods that Everett, Pete, and Delmar trek through.
Americana and folklore are incorporated into the narrative and are treated as
normal, once again blurring the line between realism and antirealism.
Religion is referenced frequently throughout the movie: our
heroes run into a congregation of Baptists along a river and Pete and Delmar
get baptized; they have a rough run-in with a travelling bible salesman; and
are being pursued by the devil himself, embodied as the sunglasses-wearing
sheriff tasked with tracking the escaped trio down. The sheriff is only shown a few times over the course of the movie, but he is always portrayed as an ominous threat with fire reflecting in his eyes.
Tommy, the travelling guitarist that
the trio meets, explains in a casual manner that he sold his soul to the devil
for guitar skills, and in describing the devil, lists of the various defining
characteristics of the sheriff. Once again, all this is taken at face value,
making the reality of their situation more fantastical through the incorporation
of religious icons.
By the end of the film, the prophecy of the blind man has come true: our trio sees the cow
on the grainhouse roof and they find the treasure, even though it was the one they did not seek. Everett found the wrong ring to win back his wife for good, and the audience is left with a shot of the blind man conveniently rolling past, reminding us of the prediction he made earlier. O Brother expertly
blends the real and the imaginary into a compelling story of an odyssey in the
normal world.
References
Barsam, Richard, and Dave Monahan. Looking At
Movies: An Introduction to Film. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2013. Print.
All images screencapped from DVD copy of:
O Brother,
Where Art Thou? Dir. Joel Coen. Prod. Ethan Coen.
Universal Pictures, 2000.
