O Brothers

I seem to remember saying, somewhere down there, that this blog wouldn't focus on day-to-day trivia. Well, we all make mistakes. I still see the autobiographical storytelling as the main raison d'être of this blog, though, so, like it or not, there's more of that to come...

Meanwhile, tonight we ate at the pub next door and then came home to veg out in front of the TV -- or so.

First up were Car and Jesus Baby Heater, two dance videos by Lea Anderson for the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs, which I'm not going to say any more about for the moment because they might contribute to one of the headline articles eventually -- What, if things go according to my current vague plans, but since I think of my fickleness as a virtue, who knows?

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...

The bulk of the evening's viewing consisted of a couple of Coen Brothers movies on DVD, Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou? Now I've seen both of these before, the latter several times. Though a Coens fan, I wasn't very keen on Fargo on first release, it seeming to me a rather weak retread of themes more viciously explored in Blood Simple. Well, this revisit changed my mind -- what a lovely film, monstrous and humane in perfect proportion, a really charmingly bloody thriller.

But still a mere squib alongside O Brother Where Art Thou? This nonsensically self-proclaimed adaptation of Homer's Odyssey is a flick that won me over completely at the first viewing, but each additional makes it seem more perfect. It is riotously funny, a classic screwball comedy of the kind they really don't make anymore. But beyond that it seems to me perhaps the most precise and delightful picture of America yet committed to film. Critical acclaim notwithstanding, The Man Who Wasn't There is a flat and dreary piece of parochial fluff in comparison. O Brother revels in imperfection and in doing so stakes its claim for the splendour of the American Dream.

These days, certainly here in Europe, more so in less privileged parts of the world, sometimes even within the US itelf, it is easy to be frivolously anti-American. Dubya's government (like those that preceded it, but oh so much more so) is corrupt, self-serving and oligarchical, hungrily seizing the opportunity offered by that terrorist atrocity to legitimize what is effectively Stalinism with a nominally western democratic face. Each day brings another bald-faced encroach on liberty, another manœuvre towards imperial hegemony. And yet America is not this ruthless, avaricious travesty, and the Coens, in their lucidly subversive way, illustrate that to the full. America, like O Brother, is about redemption, and laughter; about inclusion, and the embrace of the ridiculous. It's about making the laughable true. In his own braindead way, even King George demonstrates this, though he does his country a terrible disservice in the process. I don't know if any Americans will ever read this, but if so: for crying out loud, stand by your national ideals and laugh (and vote) that fucking moron into ignominious oblivion.

In the meantime, stand down Citizen Kane! O Brother Where Art Thou? may well be the greatest film ever made.

© Sweeping Generalizations R Us
Posted by matt at August 7, 2003 02:37 AM