I was cleaning out the garage today and found a box of DVDs, which I’m glad I held onto given how spotty streaming can be for classic older films. There was one DVD in the collection that really caught my eye, and I was already humming the bluesy tunes when I called my girls and pressed play.
O Brother Where Art Thou? is a 2000 movie from the accomplished Coen Brothers, a folksy retelling of the Odyssey set in Depression-Era Mississippi. George Clooney stars as conman Ulysses Everett McGill, an escaped convict on the run with his companions Pete and Delmar, who have less than week to get to a cache of treasure before the valley it’s hidden in becomes part of an artificial lake. Along the way, the lost travellers encounter a blind seer, the sirens, John Goodman as a Klu Klux Klan cyclops, and the Devil himself. The film drips with the music and visual beauty of the American south, and Everett’s gang falls in with historical figures such as legendary blues musician Tommy Johnson and bank-robber George “Babyface” Nelson.
I’ve always loved this film, but rewatching it again after so long I was struck by how organically all the plot points came together. So, what do I mean when I say a story is “organic”? I mean that overall, the story unfolds naturally and logically, all the elements leading to a connected, satisfying conclusion.
The first element of organic storytelling is that the major story beats arise from the decisions and actions of the main characters. The two elements of the setup; Everett’s escape and the larger election between Governor “Pappy” O’Daniel and challenger Homer Stokes, lead to a series of actions and reactions that remain part of every story beat. The character decisions themselves respond to these events, rarely bringing in wild, unexpected events but revealing the characters as part of the 1930s South. The hilarious exception to this rule was Babyface Nelson, whose brief interruption to the plot serves to break up the rhythm and give our wandering heroes some much-needed travelling money.
All of this leads to the second element of organic storytelling: that events are foreshadowed, barely noticeable at first, but falling neatly and naturally into place when it’s the right time. The fame of Everett’s impromptu “Soggy Bottom Boys” band, the flooding of the lake, the implacable (and possibly demonic) Sherriff Cooley; all these elements are quietly introduced and given time to breathe and develop, so that when they step into the foreground there’s a real anticipation. Even the story events that seem unexpected are still logical, as you can work backwards and see how it was always waiting in the background all along.
So, if you have a copy, please dust off and check out O Brother Where Art Thou? If you enjoy it half as much as I have, you’ll probably be humming “Man of Constant Sorrows” for the next week. If you have any other films with connected, organic storytelling, please let me know if the comments below!
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