O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 adventure film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey .
The American roots soundtrack won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001.
Plot
Ulysses Everett McGill, known as Everett (George Clooney), Pete (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. They walk to Pete's cousin's house, who removes their chains. 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 Tommy 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. Tommy describes the devil as being "White, white as you folks... with empty eyes and a big hollow voice. He loves to travel around with a mean old hound." This description happens to match the policeman who is pursuing the trio.
The four of them record the song "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 (John Goodman).
Everett and Delmar arrive in Everett’s home town only to find that Everett's wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), is engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip, campaign manager for gubernatorial candidate Homer Stokes. 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. After Everett and Delmar rescue him from jail, he tells them that he gave up the location of the treasure. 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. Pete is outraged at this news, primarily because he had only had two weeks left on his original sentence, which has now been extended 50 years in light of his escape.
As Everett scuffles with the furious Pete, the group stumbles upon a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob, who have caught Tommy and are about to hang him. The three disguise themselves and attempt a rescue. Big Dan, one of the Klansmen, reveals their identities, and chaos ensues, in which the Grand Wizard of the gathering reveals himself as Stokes. The trio flee the scene with Everett cutting the supports of a large burning cross, which falls on and crushes 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. After he reveals his white supremacist views, the crowd runs him out of town on a rail. Pappy O'Daniel, the sitting state governor of Mississippi, 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. Penny accepts Everett back, but she demands that he find her original ring if they are to be married. 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. When they arrive, the police order their arrest and hanging. 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. The guys begin to despair while Everett improvises a prayer to be saved. Suddenly, the valley is flooded and they are saved from hanging. Tommy finds the ring in a desk that he is floating on in the new lake, and they return to town. However, when Everett presents the ring to Penny, she tells him it is the wrong one and demands that he get her ring back. As Everett protests the futility of trying to find it at the bottom of the lake, the blind prophet the trio met earlier rolls by on his railway handcar, ending the film.
Cast
- George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill. A dashing, fast-talking Dapper Dave type, Everett was imprisoned for practicing law without a license. He claims to be escaping from prison so that he can find his buried loot in a lake bed, though in reality it was so he can get back to his family before his wife attempts to remarry. Ulysses is the Latin language form of the name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey .
- Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar O'Donnell. Delmar is good-natured but simple-minded. He was imprisoned for robbing a Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Yazoo City; he claims at first that he is innocent, but later admits to the crime. Delmar says that he will spend his share of Everett's nonexistent $1.2-million buying back his family farm, believing that "you ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land."
- John Turturro as Pete. A crude, brutish criminal, Pete reveals little about his past. He believes in being true to your kin, even when his cousin Wash (Washington B. Hogwallop) betrays the group. 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. His mutinous feelings for Everett draw a paralell between him and Eurylochus, one of Odysseus's crewmembers.
- John Goodman as Daniel "Big Dan" Teague. Big Dan is one of the main enemies of the trio in the film. Masquerading as a Bible salesman, he cons Everett, then robs him. Later, he reveals the true identity of the trio when they are in disguise at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Big Dan is blind in one eye; this is similar to Polyphemus the Cyclops in The Odyssey, who has only one eye. It has been suggested that the character is based on the itinerant Bible salesman who exploits a naive woman in the short story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor.
- Holly Hunter as Penny McGill, née Wharvey. 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. She is engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip until Everett wins her back. Her name is believed to be taken from Odysseus' wife, Penelope.
- Charles Durning as Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel. Pappy is the incumbent Governor of Mississippi. He is frequently seen berating his son and his campaign managers, who are depicted as simpletons. Pappy O'Daniel's first name, Menelaus, is the name of a Greek hero who fought alongside Odysseus in the Trojan War. His character is loosely based on former Governor of Texas W. Lee O'Daniel, who also hosted a radio show. The O'Daniel character also shares similarities with former Governor Jimmie Davis of Louisiana, a onetime gospel and country singer famous for the song "You Are My Sunshine" (which Pappy sings throughout the film).
- Chris Thomas King as Tommy Johnson. Tommy Johnson is a very skilled blues musician. He is the accompanying guitarist in the band that Everett unwittingly forms, the Soggy Bottom Boys. He claims that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his skill on guitar. He seems
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