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WillF
Reviews
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Homer, Joyce and the Coens
This is an excellent film, for a variety of reasons.
(1) The cinematography is breathtaking - it really captures the feel of the rural South. The sense of the humidity and the squalor is almost palpable.
(2) The soundtrack is absolutely perfect - it blends the very best of period and contemporary old-time Southern music, and the music integrates itself seamlessly with the film's atmosphere and action. The music is one of the main characters in the film and supplements the authenticity of the vision as surely as the photography.
(3) This is an American film through and through. It does not surprise me that audiences in Spain or viewers in Ireland did not "get it" (I'm sure there are a lot of details and allusions in Almodovar films that I don't understand) - it is a great portrait of an America which is now gone - an America now morphed into a land of Gap ads, fast food and Britney Spears videos. That America is portrayed here, not condescendingly but raucously - in the best spirit of O. Henry. The Klan scene is more intricate than most critics suggest - the political inclinations of the Grand Wizard are fascinating in our post-FDR polity. There will always be Americans who are stupid enough to hate the South - this movie will be too rich and full for their small minds to accommodate.
(4) The plot is described as meandering or disjointed by some critics, who complain that certain characters should have been given more prominence. The same critics scoff at the Coen Brothers' claim that the film is based on the Odyssey. I assume that these same critics would feel quite at home with those who made similar complaints about Joyce's Ulysses in the 1920s. The film uses the same picaresque and episodic narrative style that Homer employed in the Odyssey. It uses the same juxtaposition of the mundane and the fantastic that Homer used and the Coens set their narrative in the same context in which Homer placed his: a musical one. The original Odyssey is not a tightly-plotted, relentlessly paced thriller - it is a narrative that takes joy in the act of storytelling itself. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is a film that takes joy in the act and art of filmmaking. The plot is as it should be, even if it is not what Hollywood-trained Pavlovian viewers want it to be.
(5) This movie is as Coen as it gets with regard to funny, intelligent dialogue and visual inventiveness. The Coen brothers are still as uncompromising and dedicated to their own peculiar aesthetic as ever. And, as always, the film is richly allusive, evoking all the classic movies of the American South from "Birth of a Nation" to "Deliverance".
This film is a triumph.
Layin' Low (1996)
Nice Little Tragicomedy
If you grew up in the city, like I did, you were always amazed at how New York was portrayed in most Hollywood films. It was either a place of incredible glamour and blase decadence or abject violence and degradation. Much of the city, especially neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, have a real smalltown feel which falls short of both extremes. Layin' Low is a movie about that New York. Set in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn in (I presume the director was shooting for) the early '80's, it's a tale of two underachieving twentysomethings negotiating malaise and two-bit hustlers.
Jerry (Piven) is an unemployed would-be writer living at his folks house. This character is particularly well-written; he's not a "suffering artist" or an aesthete, just a guy who enjoys reading so much he'd like to take a whack at it. His best friend Christy is a ne'er-do-well slacker whose dreams are as small-time as he is - playing the ponies in search of the Trifecta, pigeon ranching and moving to Cleveland are schemes which occupy much of his time.
Christy and Jerry get mixed up with the clientele and the incompetent associates of a local cocaine retailer. Jerry has to leave home, and holes up in Christy's cousin Angie's apartment. Meanwhile Christy takes an interest in Jerry's parents' new boarder, Manuela. By the time all is sorted out, both friends' lives undergo drastic change.
The ensemble cast does a great job, the direction is low-key and unassuming and the overall result is charming and to this New Yorker, refreshing.