Christopher Nolan is my favorite working filmmaker, bar-none. When Oppenheimer came out, I saw it in theaters at least four times. I’ve seen Interstellar close to 10 times in theaters and have never watched it on a smaller screen for fear of lessening the experience — I just patiently await the occasional rerelease, and it’s always worth the wait. As for The Dark Knight, I’ve watched it dozens of times on every screen size.
There are lots of reasons why I love Nolan movies, but the most compelling is that his movies feel like great, big events that command your presence at the theater. And when The Odyssey arrives in July, I’ll once again be there opening weekend — even though I’m already certain that his take will never overshadow my favorite adaptation of Homer’s epic story.
The 2000 Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? takes place in Mississippi in 1937, one of the most hopeless years of the Great Depression. It centers on three inmates working on a chain gang (George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson) who escape from custody in order to find some buried treasure stashed by one of them years earlier.
To be clear, the film is an adaptation of The Odyssey in the very loosest of terms, as it merely reimagines moments from The Odyssey and inserts them into the Depression-era South. For example, the Coens’ interpretation of the cyclops is an eyepatch-wearing Bible salesman (John Goodman) who attacks the trio and steals their money. For the sirens, they’re depicted as three young women doing laundry near a river, and the trio is drawn in by their beautiful singing.
O Brother Where Art Thou is a bit of a travelogue, with several threads running throughout, but the most essential one begins with the trio recording the 1913 folk song “Man of Constant Sorrow” at a local radio station to earn a few dollars. Unbeknownst to them, the song becomes a hit all over Mississippi and ultimately saves them. Paralleling the events of the film, the recording of “Man of Constant Sorrow” used in the film became a real-life hit that even outperformed the movie itself (which was a modest success).
The Coens are such eclectic filmmakers that it’s difficult to define their style, but O Brother Where Art Thou highlights two of their strengths, particularly in comedies: broad, hilarious characters; and snappy, verbose dialogue. The leader of the movie’s trio is a showcase for both named Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney), a fast-talking conman who loves to show off how smart he is — particularly to uneducated country folk — and never knows when to shut up.
While the Coens would find greater success with comedies like the trippy, stream-of-consciousness-like Big Lebowski for cultural relevance and the darker, bloodier Burn After Reading for box office returns, O Brother Where Art Thou stands as their greatest-ever comedic screenplay. Always funny and always moving things forward, the script contains not a single missed opportunity. It’s positively airtight.
The Coens notably wrote the movie without ever consulting anything beyond cliff notes of Homer’s text, as they famously, have claimed to have never read The Odyssey before making O Brother Where Art Thou? In contrast, Nolan did deep research on The Odyssey before tackling it. He even went so far as to recommend his favorite translation of the story. In an interview with Empire Magazine, Nolan pointed to “the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’”
We get it, Chris, you can read, but you’ll still never make an Odyssey adaptation as good as O Brother Where Art Thou?
