Oh Brother!

Recently I rediscovered a movie I haven't seen in a long time (a decade, in fact).  Flipping through the channels, it jumped off the screen with sepia-toned abandon: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?  The first time I saw it was at the $2 theater in St. Cloud (ah, I loved going to that run-down spot behind the mall)...

At the time, the film sorta just washed over me, although in a very pleasant way.  If good movies work on multiple levels, then this 1st viewing worked on only the primary ones - it was pleasant to look at, enjoyable to listen to, and didn't overly tax the brain!

It's hard for me to believe that it came out 10 years ago now (in the year 2000, no less).  This was at the beginning of a new decade.  I think the country had a real optimism then which paralleled in a funny way the white-washed depression re-imagined by the film.  (This was before Bush, Cheny et al. brought the country into 2 wars and a financial climate that climaxed in the worst recession since the depression itself.)

Things being as they are now, it as with almost (seemingly) new eyes that I saw that movie again.  And again and again (via YouTube).  And then when I could gleam no more from its surface, I started looking into the tantalizing parallels with Homer's The Odyssey.  Never having read it (who has, really?), I missed most of the references during the movie.

After doing so, this is what I've come up with.  The Odyssey was basically a story about a man trying to get home again to resume the life he left behind.  Along the way he faced many obstacles and adventures, which run together in a series of memorable "scenes".  In the end, you have a the cumulative effect of these characters and scenes, but are not sure what to make of it all.

That is also an apt description of Oh Brother.  Now it's beyond the scope of this blog entry to dissect either work much past that (as for example here).  But I think the main point is this: both the movie and the book are to be seen as myths and are mainly symbolic.

To me one of the most enduring (and impotant) parts is the climactic scene where the Soggy Bottom Boys are on stage singing their (unknown to them) hit, "Man of Constant Sorrow".  As the crowd goes crazy with delight ("Hot damn, it's the Soggy Bottom Boys!"), the corrupt (and generally disagreeable) Governer Pappy O'Daniel remarks "Holy moly, these boys are a hit!"  "But Pappy", a staffer replies, "they's integrated".  To which the Governer says, "So I guess, folks don't mind they's Integrated".

Just then, Pappy O'Daniel's opponent (and KKK member) Homer Stokes breaks it up mid-song to denouce them as "miscengenated". He then accused them of being "not white" ("not even 'old-timey'"), for "interfering with a lynch-mob in the performance of its duties" and descreting "a fiery cross". But the crowd turns against him (at his own campaign fundraiser no less) and Homer Stokes taken away.

And so in this scene it happens that the power of (really good) music is enough to make people forget racism, along with inspring Penny give her "loser husband" another chance.  What's more, the governer himself (after getting onstage and co-opting the Soggy Bottom Boys) grants them all a pardon!

So maybe that's why I'm feeling this movie now again after lo these many years. On an archetypal level it reminds me of the transcendent and transformative power of music!  That it can get someone's life back on track again (and indeed make it better than it ever would have been). At any rate, I'm glad it's there to think (and laugh) about!