O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

2000 / 107min / 35mm

The Coens’ country-fried, Depression era, quasi-musical take on The Odyssey borrows its title—and more than a bit of its anarchic sense of humor—from Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, choreography cues from Busby Berkeley, and rips a few dozen pages out of the Great American Songbook for good measure. Pomaded convict Everett Ulysses McGill (George Clooney) takes a powder from a Mississippi chain gang with dimwit pals John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson in tow and sets out to scare up his Penelope (Holly Hunter), along the way running afoul of Klansmen, gangsters, sultry creek-side sirens, and a Bible-thumping Cyclops (John Goodman), even taking a quick break en route to record a jubilant rendition of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”

Distributor: Walt Disney Studios/20th Century