O Brothers, Where Art Thou?

(4 of 4)

Which is not to say that "O Brother Where Art Thou?" deserves to clean up at the Oscars. The assumption that the film's $30 million-topping grosses have probably been driven by the chart-topping sales of the soundtrack is, perhaps, not unkind — "O Brother" has the feel of a soundtrack: pleasing but choppy, with abrupt changes in tone and a sneaking feeling that something (the show) is missing. Critics may resent a bit that the Coens let the outside music hold such sway over their film — it's almost a territorial issue, keeping the music where it belongs, and the jarring disconnect between George Clooney and his singing voice (provided by neo-bluegrass luminary Dan Tyminsky) sums up the film's just-shy-of-fully-formed feeling as well as anything else.

"O Brother" falls just slightly short because Clooney does. That's where the soul of the Coens is — the hero. In "Raising Arizona" he's the dreamer, the convenience-store criminal with the soul (and narration) of a hick poet, and Nicolas Cage delivers him seamlessly, with a lot of help from those sad-sack eyes. In "Miller's Crossing," Gabriel Byrne (with a lot of help from his hat) does the thinking man's thug to perfection, relentlessly hiding his heart until it finally withers and dies (we know his soul survives because he keeps gambling). And after seeing "The Big Lebowski" a few times, it is entirely possible to forget that Jeff Bridges is playing the role — and what more to acting is that?

In "O Brother," Clooney tackles his Gable knockoff with gusto, and at the few cringe-worthy moments (the audience eats those up every time, but the "how's my hair" and "we're in a tight spot" tropes wear pretty thin) it's hard to know whether to blame him or the script. But Clooney has trouble shifting between the two gears the Coens mapped out for him — foppish, know-it-all Ulysses and soulful man-of-constant-sorrow Ulysses — and at several points gets stalled in I'm-George-Clooney Ulysses, which is still the part he's best at. Though Clooney does nail the scene where he laments his opposers — "the whole world, God Almighty, and now you fellows" — at crucial points our hero/anchor is in danger of floating away on the breeze. Cage didn't need a song called "Man of Constant Sorrow" to make sure his got across.

That said, it was a hell of a lot more interesting than "Gladiator."

O brothers, what next?
"If a movie like Fargo succeeds, then clearly nothing makes much sense, and so, you know, you might as well make whatever kind of movie you want and hope for the best."
— Joel or Ethan Coen

The Coens seem to have made their 1996 Oscar-winner a departure of some kind. Possibly, they are getting restless — next up is "The Barber Project," starring Billy Bob Thornton, McDormand, and James Gandolfini, with the brothers filling their usual writer/director/producer roles, but after that is "To the White Sea," with Brad Pitt, which (it's based on the James Dickey novel) is their first non-Greek-poem adapted screenplay. And the brothers handed a co-written script — "Intolerable Cruelty" — to Jonathan Demme.

More intriguing, music seems poised to take over their movies; "The Big Lebowski," with Bob Dylan dominating the movie, was Burnett's debut with the pair, and in "O Brother," the brothers had no use for Carter Burwell at all. Is an all-singing, all-dancing Coen brothers movie on the way?

Probably not. But certainly, big Hollywood's and the brothers' tracks have diverged considerably. "The Big Lebowski" and its inherent dig at the industry — a movie about Los Angeles in which the only film industry mentioned was the adult one — quickly sank below the mainstream-entertainment radar, reappearing sporadically with the "sleeper" tag only after it was discovered that it was a blue-chipper at the rental counter. "O Brother" has done good business, but again, has been not only lightly regarded but, in the case of the Academy, laughably misapprehended.

Certainly Oscar prefers socially redeeming types, like pregnant lady cops, to dope-smoking layabouts in bathrobes and know-it-all fop raconteurs who can't even sing (though that didn't help Val Kilmer). Perhaps the Academy feels the Coens' best movies, the hero movies like "Miller's Crossing" and "The Big Lebowski" that have made the Coens a sort of crazy-uncle Hitchcock for a certain generation of fans, are too cluttered to qualify — not realizing that they need only watch it twice more to grasp the Coens' peculiar brand of cohesiveness.

Early, early Oscar watch
But perhaps we are due for a convergence — at the "White Sea." A mainstream-sized budget — $60 million — with a mainstream star, and based (for real this time) on the novel about a downed WWII bomber pilot making his way through rural Japan to safety. Socially redeeming enough? The early, early betting here is that "To the White Sea" will be the Coens' next Oscar grab — and their first Academy acclaim for one of their hero movies — with Pitt (if Julia Roberts can do it, he can) and director Joel bringing home statues.

Unless, of course, they've turned it into a musical.