O Brother Where Art Thou?

The Plot of O Brother Where Art Thou? Everett, Pete and Delmar are three convicts who escape from the chain gang in 1930s Mississippi the two chained to Everett, encouraged by the possibility of finding treasure. The three have adventures in a burnt out landscape including riding on one of those hand operated rail cars with a blind man and riding in a car with Baby Face Nelson, who engages in exchanges of machine gun fire with the police. They are also seduced by three sirens and Pete disappears, to be found back in the chain gang. Importantly they make a recording at a radio station in the boondocks as the Soggy Bottom Boys. They are chased by the authorities and unbeknown to themselves their song becomes a hit, but no-one knows who they are. It turns out that Everett is trying to get his wife back, but she has told their daughter that he has been run over by a train and seems reluctant to return to him having taken up with another man. Things come to a climax when the Soggy Bottom Boys entertain at a politician’s election event.

Content: No sex or nudity although the sirens are pretty seductive, even fully clothed. They also drink moonshine in their company. The film contains loosely connected scenes where the three guys continuously escape from the chasing lawmen and often steal cars, in the style of Bonnie and Clyde. There are scenes where they are attacked by a mad bible salesman and also take up with a black guitar player who had met the devil at a crossroads at midnight, later having to rescue the guitarist from an enormous parade of  Ku Klux Klan men. They are also pursued by a candidate for the governorship of Mississippi, who is based on a real character.

A View: My wife and I had seen this in the cinema in Aberdeen and had not liked it much, apparently a frequent view. But this time on TV I found it absolutely terrific – also a frequent view, but I’m not sure that both views have been held by the same person.  It is a subtle and well presented outing and the more I have found out about it the more I have liked it.  So I would recommend it as a view, but possibly bone up on the subtext by reading the IMDb trivia first.

Fun Fact: The soundtrack, performed by a number of C&W musicians, won Grammy album of the year in 2002, sold millions of copies and resulted in the Down from the Mountain concert tour.