O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

“It’s a new new thing, classic myth from both literature and the movies, commingled, set to great folk music, and untrammeled by any sense of predictability, urgency, realism or believability but hypnotic, graceful and seductive.” — Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

SYNOPSIS

A Depression-era picaresque told with the loose, wandering rhythm of an American folk ballad, Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? filters Homer’s Odyssey through chain-gang blues, radio gospel, and backwoods tall tales. Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), struggling to endure a hard-labor sentence in Mississippi, cons his way off a chain gang alongside the dim-witted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) and the perpetually aggrieved Pete (John Turturro), promising them a hidden fortune if they help him escape. Still shackled together and with the law close behind, the trio drifts across a mythologized South populated by blind prophets, slippery salesmen, crooked politicians, and voices on the radio that seem to travel farther than any of them ever could.

Shot in burnished, dust-colored tones that evoke faded photographs and half-remembered legends, the Coens blend deadpan comedy with genuine affection for the music, myths, and improvised storytelling that shape America’s idea of itself. Taking its title from Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, what unfolds is less a historical portrait than a piece of cinematic folklore: a shaggy, wandering parable about fools, believers, and the strange persistence of hope.