O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) on Netflix
PG-1320001h 46mAdventureComedyCrimeMusic
Three convicts break out of a Mississippi chain gang in 1937. Everett McGill has a treasure buried in a valley that is about to be flooded, and Sheriff Cooley gives chase.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.7/10355,710 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1937, Everett McGill escapes a Mississippi chain gang with two fellow convicts, Pete and Delmar. Everett is after a treasure he buried in a valley that will soon be flooded into a lake, and Sheriff Cooley rides after the three. A blind man on a handcar tells them the fortune they find will not be the one they seek. Pete and Delmar are baptized in a river; Everett refuses. The men pick up Tommy Johnson, a guitarist who says a bargain with the devil won him his skill. Short of money, the four record a song at a radio station as the Soggy Bottom Boys.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Neither Coen brother had actually read Homer's Odyssey before loosely basing the film on it; according to them, Tim Blake Nelson, who holds a classics degree from Brown University, was the only person on set who had read the epic.
- Cinematographer Roger Deakins spent 11 weeks digitally shifting the film's greens to a burnt-yellow, desaturated look, making it the first feature entirely color corrected by digital means, narrowly beating Nick Park's Chicken Run to that milestone.
- Clooney did not immediately understand his character and sent the script to his uncle, asking him to read the whole thing into a tape recorder. Unknown to Clooney, his uncle, a devout Baptist, omitted every "damn" and "hell" from the Coens' script, which he learned only when the directors pointed it out during shooting.
- The Soggy Bottom Boys' singing voices were dubbed by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright, and their recording of "Man of Constant Sorrow" won both a CMA Award for Single of the Year and a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
- At a cast reunion during the 2020 Nashville Film Festival, George Clooney recalled being called into the recording studio and singing despite his lack of talent; it was assumed that he could sing because he was the nephew of Rosemary Clooney, but he could not.
- The film's Pappy O'Daniel is similar in name and demeanour to W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, one-time Governor of Texas and later U.S. Senator, who was in the flour business, carried a broom in one campaign and had a theme song with the hook "Please pass the biscuits, Pappy".
- The film's title borrows from the 1941 Preston Sturges film Sullivan's Travels, in which a director character wants to make a Depression-era drama called O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a book that only exists within that earlier movie.
