Clooney in adaptation of Homer's classic
JAKARTA (JP): Adapted from Homer's classic piece The Odyssey, O'Brother Where Art Thou is set in the 1930s, a period when America was a junction of a number of great streams of sentiment.
Despair brought about by an economic depression, archaic racism (represented by the Ku Klux Klan) and a great desire in each individual to get out of an economic black hole conspire to present to us three fugitives running away from a forced labor camp.
One of these fugitives is sympathetically played by Hollywood sweetheart George Clooney, who is casually dressed and wears a moustache a la Clark Gable and shiny hair a la Mogambo. As you can easily guess, he is the wise Ulysses from whom the Greek king asked for advice. In this film he is called Everett "Ullyse" McGill.
The other two fugitives are a modest and naive person excellently played by Tim Blake Nelson (Delmar) and Pete, played by John Torturro. The escape made by the three fugitives symbolizes the sentiments of all individuals in 1930s to get out of the socially oppressive situation then prevailing.
Joel Coen, who has the reputation of a cynical post-modern director, offers a treasure worth US$ 1.2 million hidden somewhere in a cabin on condition that it must be found in three days. This amount is an illusory figure simply to validate Coen's version of The Odyssey.
As usual, Coen, who collaborated with his brother Ethan Coen as screenwriter, does not constrain himself to the rationality of every detail. The escape of the three (anti-) heroes from a heavily guarded camp has in itself stretched credibility to its limit.
However, it is not rationality on center stage, but a story of life. The beauty of the story emerges as various events and characters are reconciled to depict the comedy of life. Betrayal, friendship, racism, the need for the warmth of a family, cruelty and an ambition all compete in this tapestry of life. Even Ullyse the wise becomes highly human when he must try to foil a plan by his wife (played by Holly Hunter) to marry a man with a better- secured future.
Like the previous film, The Big Lebowski, illusion and emptiness constitute the instinct of the Coen Brothers' film. The hidden treasure is never found and may never have existed at all; a woman's caresses and warmth are never empirical in nature; holiness is no guarantee of chastity, and power cannot guarantee wisdom. For the entire 1 hour and 42 minutes, the beauty of the film actually rests on Coen's ability to encourage the moviegoers to move from one emptiness to another.
As this emptiness is presented in comedy, Coen's film is entertainingly pleasing. The moment you step out of the cinema, you seem to concur with Kafka or Preston Sturges (a nearly forgotten film comedian), to whom the film is dedicated, that the greatness of a comedy is found deep beneath the laughter.
-- Risa Permanadeli