O Brother Where Art Thou

The film displays a sly reference to another type of mythmaking: filmmaking, specifically the 1941 satire Sullivan's Travels by Preston Sturges, in which the title character sets out to make a grim, socially conscious film to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou? After the privileged director experiences hardships of his own, he decides that comedic films are of more value than self-important dramas. Similarly, the Coen brothers' movie also has the tone and imagery of Depression-era realism interlaced with a comedic element.
The American roots soundtrack won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001.


Plot
Ulysses Everett McGill, known as Everett (George Clooney), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro), and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang and set out to retrieve the $1.2 million in treasure that Everett claims to have stolen from an armored car and buried before his incarceration.

They have only four days to find it before the valley in which it is hidden will be flooded to create Arkabutla Lake as part of a new hydroelectric project. Early on in their escape, they try to jump onto a moving train with some hobos, but fall off due to Pete's inability to get on.

They then encounter a blind man traveling on a manual railroad car. They hitch a ride, and he foretells their futures, similar to the oracle of Homer's Odyssey.
The group sets out for the treasure.

He turns them into the authorities because he needs the money to support his family. They escape from the burning barn where they were sleeping, and continue on their journey.

When they pass a congregation on the banks of a river, Pete and Delmar are enticed by the idea of baptism. As the journey continues, they travel briefly with a young guitarist named Tommy Johnson (a character with similarities to blues guitarist Robert Johnson, played by real-life blues musician Chris Thomas King).When asked why he was at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, he reveals that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar. He loves to travel around with a mean old hound." This description happens to match the policeman who is pursuing the trio.


The sirens seduce Everett, Pete, and Delmar.

The four of them record "Man of Constant Sorrow" at a radio broadcast station, calling themselves the Soggy Bottom Boys.

While they initially record the song for some easy money, it later becomes famous around the state. The trio parts ways with Tommy after their car is discovered by police, and they continue their adventures on their own.

Among the many encounters they have, the most notable are a car trip and bank robbery with the famous bank robber George Nelson who when robbing a bank, is angered by an old woman who calls him Baby Face Nelson, a run-in with three sirens who seduce the group and hypnotize them to sleep (using a technique similar to those in the Odyssey) before apparently turning Pete into a toad, as a reference to the witch Circe who turned Odysseus's men into animals, and a mugging by a cyclopean Bible salesman named Big Dan Teague.
Everett and Delmar arrive in Everett’s home town only to find that Everett's wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), is engaged to Vernon T. She refuses to take Everett back and is so ashamed of him that she has been telling their daughters he was hit by a train and killed.

While watching a movie in a cinema, Everett and Delmar discover that Pete is still alive, the sirens having turned him in to collect the bounty on his head. Everett reveals that there was never any treasure; he only mentioned it to persuade the other men (to whom he was chained) to escape so he could reconcile with his estranged wife.

As Everett scuffles with the furious Pete, the group stumbles upon the Ku Klux Klan, who have caught Tommy and are about to hang him. The trio flee the scene with Tommy cutting the supports of a large burning cross, which falls on a group of Klansmen, including Big Dan.
Everett convinces Pete, Delmar, and Tommy to help him win his wife back.They sneak into a Stokes campaign dinner that she is attending posing as musicians, disguised as old men. Everett tries to convince his wife that he is "bona fide," but she brushes him off.

The group begins an impromptu musical performance, during which the crowd recognizes them as the Soggy Bottom Boys and goes wild. Stokes, on the other hand, recognizes them as the group who disgraced his mob and shouts for the music to stop, angering the crowd.

Pappy O’Daniel, the sitting state governor, seizes the opportunity and endorses the Soggy Bottom Boys, granting all of them a full pardon while the entire event is being recorded and played on the radio. This series of events is similar to the return of Odysseus to Ithaca and his task of winning his wife Penelope from her suitors. As they leave the dinner, they run into a mob taking jubilant George Nelson to the jail to be electrocuted.

Delmar comments, "Looks like George is right back on top again."
The group sets out to retrieve the ring, which is at a cabin in the valley that Everett originally claimed to have hidden the treasure in. Everett protests that they had been pardoned on the radio, but the leader of the police force tells them that it is of no consequence, since the law is only a human institution, plus they have no radio.

A dashing, fast-talking Dapper Dan type, Everett was imprisoned for practicing law without a license. He dreams of moving out west and opening a fine restaurant, where he will be the maître d'.He agreed to go along with the breakout, even though it is revealed that he only had two weeks left on his sentence.
John Goodman as Daniel "Big Dan" Teague. Big Dan is one of the main enemies of the trio in the film.

Big Dan has one eye, just as Polyphemus the Cyclops does in The Odyssey. A demanding woman, Penny Wharvey is fed up with Everett's previous behavior and divorces him while he is in prison, telling their children that he was hit by a train.

He claims that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his skill on guitar. Most of the times he appears in the film there are flames nearby, usually reflected in his glasses.

He further indicates his otherworldliness when, advised that it would be illegal to hang the pardoned fugitives, he sneeringly opines that "the law is a human institution."
Wayne Duvall as Homer Stokes. Homer Stokes is the reform candidate in the upcoming election for the position of Governor of Mississippi.

It has been suggested that the character's name is a subtle nod to novelist Howard Waldrop, whose novella A Dozen Tough Jobs is one of the inspirations behind the film. The character's name can also be taken as an allusion to William Faulkner's If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, which includes a character named Vernon Waldrip. The character, the situation, and the performance almost directly parallel a similar situation in John Ford's The Searchers.
Michael Badalucco as George Nelson.A serial bankrobber who dislikes being called "Baby Face." His character, possibly based on Lester Joseph Gillis (better known as Baby Face Nelson), is depicted as being manic-depressive.
Stephen Root as Mr. He is the blind radio station manager who pays musicians to "sing into a can" and originally records the Soggy Bottom Boys' hit, "Man of Constant Sorrow."
Lee Weaver as the Blind Seer.

Homer Stokes's mascot.

Critical reception
O Brother, Where Art Thou? was critically successful, with much praise going to its more modern adaption of The Odyssey, and the film received a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Southern politics


Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, with a bust of Homer behind him.

A major theme of the film is the connection between old-time music and political campaigning in the southern U.S. The O'Daniel of the movie used "You Are My Sunshine" as his theme song (which was originally recorded by real-life Governor of Louisiana James Houston "Jimmie" Davis) and Homer Stokes, as the challenger to the incumbent O'Daniel, portrays himself as the "reform candidate," using a broom as a prop.
Music
Much of the music used in the film is folk music from the period in which the film is set, including that of Virginia folk/bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley. The music selection is drawn from spiritual music of this region (including that of the Primitive Baptist Church) and other popular religious music, most notably the Fairfield Four, an a cappella quartet with a career extending back to 1921 who appear in the soundtrack and as gravediggers towards the film's end.
There is a notable use of dirges and other macabre songs, a theme that often recurs in Appalachian music ("Oh Death," "Lonesome Valley," "Angel Band") in contrast to bright or corrective songs ("Keep On the Sunnyside," "You Are My Sunshine") in other parts of the movie.
The lead-guitarist character (Tommy) of the Soggy Bottom Boys is an intended reference to Delta Blues artist Tommy Johnson, who claimed that he sold his soul to the devil in return for being able to play the guitar.

The Soggy Bottom Boys’ hit single is Dick Burnett's "Man of Constant Sorrow," a song that had already enjoyed much success in real life.
After the film's release, the fictional band became so popular that the actual talents behind the music (who were dubbed into the movie) Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Dan Tyminski, Chris Sharp, and others, performed music from O Brother, Where Art Thou? in a Down from the Mountain concert tour and film. However, "I'll Fly Away" in the original soundtrack is performed not by Krauss and Welch (as it is on the CD release and was on the concert tour) but by the inimitable Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling (of The Weavers, Tarriers and Rooftop Singers) accompanying on long-neck 5-string banjo.
The voices behind the Soggy Bottom Boys are well-known bluegrass musicians: Union Station's Dan Tyminski (lead on "Man of Constant Sorrow"), Nashville songwriter Harley Allen, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band's Pat Enright. The three won a CMA Award for Single of the Year and a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, both for the song "Man of Constant Sorrow." Tim Blake Nelson, playing Delmar O'Donnell in the movie (one of the Soggy Bottom Boys), sang the lead vocal himself for the song "In the Jailhouse Now."
"Man of Constant Sorrow" has five variations: two are used in the movie, one in the music video, and two in the soundtrack. Two of the variations feature the verses being sung back-to-back, and the other three variations feature additional music between each verse. Despite its subsequent success, "Man of Constant Sorrow" received little significant radio airplay and only charted at #35 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts in 2002.
Similarities between the film and The Odyssey
The opening credits explicity state the story of the film is based on The Odyssey by Homer.