30 for 30: 2000 — "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
"Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!"
What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2000. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999
I practically memorized the soundtrack to “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” before I ever saw the movie. I was 9 when the Coen Brothers’ riff on Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” was released, and as such did not know who the Coens or Homer were. But I did know the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is probably what this movie is most known for, which makes sense, given that it went platinum eight times and was the best-selling soundtrack album of the year for 2001 and 2002 and the best-selling country album of 2002. It stayed on the Billboard charts until 2004, and then again from 2014-2017. The single “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow” made it to No. 35 on 2002’s U.S. country Billboard chart. (A brief anecdote for anyone doubting just how big that song was in the south at the time: I went to a summer VBS week one year where the worship band performed “Constant Sorrow” as the closing song, and everyone went nuts. It was like the final Soggy Bottom Boys performance in the movie.)
I didn’t actually see the movie until I was a teenager, but I listened to enough bluegrass and enough of the “O Brother” soundtrack to know that it was Union Station’s Dan Tyminski singing lead vocals for George Clooney on “Constant Sorrow,” and that he got a Grammy for that song. I knew that Alison Krauss performed a new version of “Down to the River to Pray” for the movie. And if you were an avid CMT viewer in the early aughts (as I was), the “Constant Sorrow” music video was unavoidable.
That’s not to say that I particularly enjoyed the music. I’ve always liked roots music and country music, but at the time of its release, the sounds of “O Brother” sounded too slow and too southern, too much like the Bill Monroe CD my dad played all the time. I learned a lot about this type of music from osmosis instead of actually listening to it. But I could only fight that feeling for so long. I am who I am, and bluegrass and roots music has only become more calming and comforting to me over the years.
When I finally did see the movie, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and also at how much the music actually plays a part in the movie. “O Brother” is a Depression-era riff on “The Odyssey” that doesn’t take Homer too seriously. The Coens have called this movie their “three stooges movie” and their “epic hayseed poem” movie. Its title is the first indication that “O Brother” will be irreverent to the original epic poem. It takes its title from Preston Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels,” a 1941 film about a movie director who gets himself put on a chain gang and lives like a vagrant for a while so he can have the proper experience to direct “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, a movie about “the working man.” He ends up framed for a crime he didn’t commit and learns that people don’t want to see serious movies, they just want to laugh in order to forget their troubles.
“O Brother” visually references “Sullivan’s Travels” in several places, but its main reference points besides the title is in Goerge Clooney’s Ulysses, who, like Sullivan, is never quite aware that he’s the butt of the joke; and in the selection of country and roots music — “working-class music” — to soundtrack this American Odyssey through the south.
The American Odyssey, the Coens seem to be saying, is made up of con men and the ways we exaggerate our own importance. Every character here, from Ulysses, Pete and Delmar to George “Babyface” Nelson to Robert Johnson to Mississippi Governor Pappy O’Daniel, are all either selling something or angling for a way to save their own skin. Music saves a lot of those characters, too, but the people using the music always employ it to self-serving ends.
Ulysses, Pete and Delmar first record “Constant Sorrow” to get paid. Their accompanist Robert Johnson can only play the guitar so well because he’s that Robert Johnson, the one who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for musical talent. The record executive lets them record because “that Negro music is eating up the charts.” The Soggy Bottom Boys get to perform at a campaign rally for O’Daniel, who pardons them after he realizes it will help him win reelection. And it’s all soundtracked with some of the best gospel, country and roots music ever recorded.
In the end, it all works out for our heroes, but the whole thing has a very Coen Brothers feel to it, a way of realizing how absurd the whole thing really is. Even if you’re cynical about it, as the Coens seem to be, music saves people, even three convicted criminals like Ulysses, Pete and Delmar, and even if they deny the power of it afterward.
Up next: We head on over to Middle-earth for 2001’s “The Fellowship of the Ring.”
Letter of Recommendation
Here’s more on “Sullivan’s Travels,” which would make for a very interesting double feature with “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
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