Celebrating the Coen Brothers and O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
Race, Religion and Populism. Looking for Answers in the Christ-Haunted South. "Down to the River to Pray."
As a treatment of race, religion, and populist politics, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen Brothers, 2000), stands out as a timeless addition to human understanding. Ostensibly based on The Odyssey, advertised in the titles with a screen credit for Homer, the epic poem contributes little more than a pool of allusions from which to draw clever parallels and character names. More than anything, the red herring offers a clue to what this film is really about: a journey, a trek, a quest, a wandering, a pilgrimage, travels (see below for indebtedness to Sullivan’s Travels), and a metaphorical path to redemption. An odyssey.
When our three escaped convicts quickly encounter the blind seer, a careful listener hears everything he needs to know in terms of synopsis.
You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. And you will find a fortune - though it will not be the fortune you seek.
But first, first you must travel a long and difficult road...fraught with peril and pregnant with adventure.
I cannot say how long this road shall be. But fear not the obstacles in your path, for Fate has vouchsafed your reward. And though the road may wind, and yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow the way, even unto your salvation.
Set in 1937, in depression-strapped Mississippi, the story emphasizes three main subplots, Everett Ulysses McGill (our protagonist) and his journey back home to his wife, Penelope, and their seven daughters, a campaign for the hearts and minds of Mississippi voters in the upcoming gubernatorial election, and the relentless forces of humanity, racial convention, and culture coming together to presage social change.
Everett, the-self appointed leader of our three travelers, fancies himself an “astute observer of the human scene” with an outsized “capacity for abstract thought.” Always ready with a plan, smooth-talking Everett refers to himself as the “old tactician.” Of course, perversely, his plans never unfold as intended, and his readings of his fellow man generally miss the mark as well. Handsome and vain, with an ongoing preoccupation with his hair, his vanity parallels his hubris. As in other Coen vehicles, George Clooney expertly inhabits this extraordinarily talented but nevertheless clueless character. Even with his prodigious “gift of gab,” Everett represents the everyman, leaning into his own understandings, forever overestimating his own abilities, and, although repeatedly saved from his folly by a gracious providence, remaining perpetually and ironically blind to his indebtedness.
Along for the ride are Pete and Delmar. Pete, scowling, simmering, and contentious, never fully accepts Everett’s leadership. Volatile and intensely loyal in the most basic tribal sense, Pete seems ever ready to defend his kin, fight his way out of a tight spot, or contest a point with vehemence. The underappreciated Delmar O'Donnell provides the soul of the expedition. Always the conciliator, Delmar finds salvation through baptism early on. He wears his new faith not so much as an epiphany but more like a perfectly fit garment for which he has been waiting all his life. Kind and considerate even before his religious conversion, and easily mistaken for a fool, Delmar effortlessly models Christian charity throughout the journey and represents the pilgrim most likely to offer up a refreshingly simple truth. “You don't say much friend, but when you do it's to the point and I salute you for it.”
Along the way, the trio meet Tommy Johnson, a Black guitar player fresh from selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for preternatural musical prowess. Reserved, deferential, and earnest, Tommy provides the spark that transforms four drifters into the Soggy Bottom Boys, the mysterious and bewitching musical group that cuts a record that becomes an overnight sensation and drives the plot to an unlikely happy conclusion. While the boys are kind and respectful to Tommy, the story never fully develops his character or fully fuses him into the journey. In fact, after a forced separation, Tommy disappears from most of the film. However, risking their lives to save Tommy from the Klan as we steam toward the climax, the Boys are reunited and identified as the enigmatic ensemble behind the popular frenzy. When the Boys unknowingly uncork their hit single to a rapturous audience that seems not to care that the group is “integrated,” the gleeful acceptance presages an American culture that will appreciate Black artists and athletes in a way that breaks down a century of Jim Crow segregation. The 2000 film offers up a quaintly optimistic racial tale that strikes us as dated in the turmoil and recriminations of 2021. Notwithstanding, even in the midst of our tumultuous moment, the subplot from two-decades ago speaks to a possibility of harmony and reconciliation intentionally farcical but not completely ahistorical and seemingly a welcome alternative going forward.
The other subplot culminating at the banquet hall is the race for governor of Mississippi, pitting incumbent Menelaus “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy” O'Daniel, against his challenger, Homer Stokes. Delivering mighty body blows through the new tools of mass-communication, the campaign trades in familiar themes we still recognize in modern politics. The sitting governor, presumably, an enlightened New Dealer progressive, wearily struggles to retain power in a campaign headed in the wrong direction. The energetic challenger casts himself as the voice of the little man, the enemy of the interests, and just the person to sweep out corruption with the broom of reform. Although Homer Stokes never promises to “drain the swamp,” he clearly represents a populist dissatisfaction with a stale government detached from reality and not quite fit for a new day. With both candidates jockeying to “court the electorate” through broad and crass appeals, the veteran pol ultimately and dramatically turns the tables in the crucial moment with his sly ability to read the people better than his rival demagogue.
The Coens present a dry and dusty world in need of relief. Everywhere desperate people are “looking for answers.” Marriages fail. Recriminations fly. “Hard times flush the chumps.” A fraudulent Bible salesman confesses “there is damn good money in the word of God during these days of woe and want; folks’re looking for answers and I am selling the only book that’s got ‘em.” Historically, 1937 represents the height of the Dust Bowl and also an economic recession within the decade-long Great Depression. Virtuoso cinematographer Roger Deakins (who garnered an Academy Award nomination for his efforts) employed what was then cutting edge technique to digitally dry out the verdant countryside, turning green life into a dehydrated golden brown. Shot in color, but often characterized as sepia-toned, the moving pictures and costuming intentionally conjure the contemporaneous WPA photography that so captured the deprivation of the era.
In a parched universe, the presence of even murky water stands out. “Cool clear water” may be the ideal, but even muddy water represents a life-sustaining force. Early on in the film the trio encounters the renewing waters of baptism. As the boys fall in with an endless parade of entranced, white-robed congregants streaming toward the riverbank singing “Lord, show us the way,” Everett looks on with condescending puzzlement and annoyance. But Delmar, overcome with emotion, responds to the summons of the spirit and undergoes baptism. “Well that’s it boys, I been redeemed; the preacher warshed away all my sins and transgressions,” he happily proclaims. Less confident but nevertheless moved, Pete impulsively follows Delmar in baptism, leaving a skeptical and exasperated Everett “unaffiliated” and watching helplessly: “follow you two ignorant fools in a ridiculous superstition? Thank you, anyway.”
The film tacitly poses two crucial questions:
Does Christianity possess life-transforming power? Delmar personifies Christian love and compassion in so many ways. But, as noted above, his new-found religion may merely offer him a welcome framework for expressing his already present humanity. Pete follows Delmar in baptism but we see little change in his personality. And, of course, Everett remains stubbornly on the outside, seemingly immune (perhaps even deaf) to the spiritual invitation. Is a fuller life really available through Christ? The evidence is not conclusive. And, related, do we see a Christ-centered South in this film, or do we encounter what Flannery O’Connor labeled a Christ-haunted South? That is, do the teachings of Christ (faith, hope, charity, love for your neighbor) form the true architecture of southern society? Or do the trappings of Christian rituals, empty rhetoric, and religious structure merely represent a benign but essentially meaningless skeleton for southern culture. Are Southerners merely culturally Christian? Or are they truly living out the tenets of the faith?
Of course, music (the hymnody) plays a role in the film that sets it apart from previous Coen work. Enlisting the genius of T. Bone Burnett to embroider the narrative, the Coen Brothers, arguably the best screenwriters of their generation, allow the award-winning soundtrack to do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to theology. Employing gospel music (white and Black), Appalachian dirges, upbeat tunes, and even incorporating the historical confrontation between “old time” music and Bluegrass, the movie salts authentic Christian voices throughout the story. “I’ll fly away to God’s celestial shore.” “I’ll be somewhere working for my Lord...If he calls me, I will answer.” “O bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home.”
Of course, the key song in the film is “Man of Constant Sorrow,” which appears four times (twice as a live performance driving the plot and twice instrumentally covering the journey). The classic American folk song, over a century old, brought to prominence in 1951 by the Stanley Brothers and covered during the 1960s by Bob Dylan and Judy Collins, speaks to the relentless “trouble” and heartache of life on earth. In this world, “we are born to ramble.” Life offers no guarantees (“perhaps we’ll die upon this train”). But there is one promise given: “we will meet on God’s golden shore.” And when providence reveals our “strangers” as the voices behind the popular hit song, the “hot and harmonized” version of the American classic, at least on one plane of fictional existence, saves the Boys and delivers on the oblique promise of salvation.
But there is just one catch. One last labor. The performance at the banquet hall brings together several threads. The governor of Mississippi pardons the Soggy Bottom Boys for “their rough and rowdy ways,” unexpectedly “squaring them” with the authorities. Captivated by his performance and his celebrity (and his brightened prospects), Penny’s love for Everett finds new life, reuniting the family in what appears to be a fabulous happy conclusion. However, Penny insists upon her original wedding ring for the remarriage ceremony, and the Soggy Bottom Boys reluctantly embark on one final errand to retrieve this artifact and finally set everything right.
Unfortunately, Cooley, their dogged pursuer, whom we have encountered multiple times and earlier identified as the white Devil who purchased Tommy’s soul, lies waiting in ambush for the Boys. Unaware and unmoved by the lawful pardon, Cooley clearly intends to extract a penalty beyond the writ of human institutions. The Boys find three graves and three nooses clearly designated for them. As they struggle against their “fate,” Pete, Delmar, and notably Everett (most vociferously and kneeling in prayer) call upon the Lord for help. And, presumably the Lord delivers. A torrential wall of water comes crashing through the hollow, smashing all in its wake and casting the proceedings into chaos and, ultimately, rendering redemption. The Boys emerge from the flood gasping for air but safe from Cooley.
“It’s a miracle,” Delmar exclaims. Everett resists. We knew the TVA was going to flood the valley. There is a perfectly rational explanation. Delmar and Pete protest: “We prayed to God and he pitied us.” They point out that Everett just moments before was calling upon God for deliverance. But Everett will have none of it (“any human will cast about in a moment of stress”), even as irrefutable signs of fulfilled prophecy float by.
The Unsettling Conclusion. Everett rejected his first opportunity at baptism, but God remained attentively persistent. At the gallows Everett called upon the Lord and received deliverance and an involuntary baptism to seal the deal. But Everett, always confident in his own agency, refuses to acknowledge his salvation as a gift from God. In the final scene, Everett is home, he is presumably at peace (although not completely free of domestic problems), and God clearly is at work in his life. But we are left with this nagging question: has Everett changed? Not visibly. In his mind, he still possesses all the answers and remains the master of his own fate.
What about the Coen Brothers? What is the message of this film? There is no indication that the Coens advocate a God-driven universe in which salvation emanates from any religious teaching. They are always loving and respectful of the worlds they create. For example, we are spared the hackneyed convention of a hypocritical preacher in this work or the gratuitous use of the church to defend obvious evils. The Coens go to great lengths to steelman the arguments of Christianity in the fictional community they construct. Moreover, we concede that art often transcends the artist. For Christians, inarguably, this movie offers plenty of joy, encouragement, poignancy, and satisfaction in scene after scene.
But the Coens most often find meaning, if they find meaning at all, in the smaller spaces of human existence. As noted above, this film pays homage to the Preston Sturges masterpiece Sullivan’s Travels. O Brother features myriad story parallels to the 1941 classic satire of the film industry, in which a spoiled and comfortable director of successful Hollywood comedies desires to see the real world, feel the suffering of regular people, and make a “serious” film (based on a fictional novel O Brother, Where Art Thou?). In the end, after inept and comic hijinks, a case of mistaken identity in which his friends believe he is hit and killed by a train, and he endures real suffering on a chain gang in a Southern prison, Sullivan realizes the power of comedy in the lives of the downtrodden. Perhaps, like Sturges, the Coens reject the pretentiousness and self-importance of trafficking in easy answers to big questions; rather, they find meaning in the temporal joys of life: laughing out loud at a physical comedy or finding a toe-tapping pop hit that stirs the soul.
We are on a journey. And though the road may wind and our hearts may grow weary, we will follow the way unto our salvation. The fortune we find will probably not be the fortune we seek, but we can only hope it will be a great fortune nonetheless.
Phenomenal article. One of the best lines I’ve ever read is where you wrote “reject the pretentiousness and self-importance of trafficking in easy answers to big questions”. That sums up everything that is killing us now. I promise to plagiarize the hell out of you during my many barroom philosophy sessions. I’m kidding. I will attribute the quote to you.