Introducing: Are We Sure That Was Good? No. 1
Revisiting the favorites of our past with the burden of time and change. This time: O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
I am thankful to have landed in the physical and mental space that I have been in for the last couple of years: relatively healthy, relatively safe, with a wonderful and large local community of friends, a family that I love without difficulty, a beautiful and caring partner, and most importantly, time.
What these gifts have given me is the opportunity to fill my free hours and my conversations with art and reflection, two of the most wonderful and necessary pieces of a full and fulfilling life. As I age through my mid-30’s, and as I work past my own personal experiences with a world-resetting pandemic, I have had time and space and support to examine my current self, my past self, my current world, my past world, and I’ve learned to be comfortable with the inevitable change, even when it can result in loss.
A challenging loss I experience frequently is the bloom on the rose of old movies; not movies that are old themselves, necessarily, but rather movies that have been in my life for going on 30 years. Even with neverending, unabashed love and appreciation for a thing, I have found that when I take it out of the closet, or slot it into my Bluray player, that the light has dimmed, that the colors have faded, that the depths have shallowed. This isn’t to say that I have lost depth of feeling; I would argue I’ve gained it. I have also gained knowledge and experience exponentially over time, as we do, and it feels as if that should protect us from dimming, from fading, from shallowing. But, of course, nothing can protect us from that.
I am learning to appreciate how my old favorite movies reflect my own changes back towards me, and I am learning to love how movies can seal and protect old versions of myself within them, mosquitos in amber carrying my DNA. I am learning to love the letting go of my old treasures, which I know will leave me one day without my permission, and making room for new and unforeseen experiences. I am learning to let go of more that I love, and to love the fact that I ever had it at all.
And this, the burdensome knowledge of aging and decaying, is the joy and satisfaction that I want to share with all of my readers and peers, my friends and family. And I want to do it – how else? – by watching movies.
Are We Sure That Was Good is an investigative series, programmed by me (for now), in which we pluck out a movie from history that was a joy, and a treasure, and we attack it with the magnifying glass of age, time, wisdom, and changing tastes. The idea here is to be as personal as possible; no one needs me to ask if CITIZEN KANE (1941) was good or not (reader, I just watched Citizen Kane again a few nights ago, and it is aging like gold. It is, still, beautiful and wonderful). No, I want to ask us if we’re sure SPEED RACER (2008) was good (also doesn’t qualify, because I watch it every single year and it is a perfect movie). I want to ask if ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE (1994) is good (this one doesn’t count either, because it is my younger brother’s most watched movie, making it untouchable, and is also a perfect movie). I want to ask if any Quentin Tarantino movie was surely good (this is actually a good idea, because being a young American man alongside Tarantino’s career means you don’t see them clearly or critically, you just praise and pray to them by default).
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a Portland (or nearby) reader, please let me know if you’d like to watch these movies and experience the questioning for yourself!
In this first edition, we revisited a movie that was massively important for me: it taught me what folk music was, it was one of the first movies I remember loving alongside my parents, it was the basis for connecting with one of my favorite school teachers I ever had, and it was a movie that felt like magic while also feeling old-timey.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000)
In this series, context is everything. I was 10 years old the year this movie came out, and I first saw it at home, likely after my parents rented it from Blockbuster Video. I immediately liked it, I immediately locked some of its images and sounds into my brain forever (WE … THOUGHT … YOU … WAS … A TOAD), and I’m sure I watched it many times over the following 10 years, empowered by the offerings of cable television.
A nice milestone that is recent enough for me to use as a marker for when I last saw a movie was my move to Portland in 2015, and I’m not sure if I have seen this movie since then, which made it a wonderful selection for this project: sealed in amber, plenty of dust collected on it.
In my time away from O BROTHER, I have learned a metric ton of information about movies and about their production. This has been a magical adventure of learning, full of excitement and wonder, but it can really detract from a certain unknowable aura that movies can give when we’re younger, and when we don’t know any better. A great example of this is trying to explain to a kid what a director is, what a director does; it doesn’t make sense to connect a single person making suggestions to the huge, entertaining feast that we see on the screen. In this case, as in many, ignorance really is bliss.
On this rewatch, joined by a sizable handful of my friends who both had and had not seen the film before, I noticed the editing. I felt the decisions to change from one shot to another, from one scene to another. I noticed, for the first time, that the Coen brothers used “wipe” transitions, a quirky choice for a quirky movie, but a choice that can draw attention to itself. I could simply feel the hands of the filmmakers wrapped around the project and its elements, in a way that is intellectually stimulating, but sacrifices some of the film’s zest for life.
It bears mentioning that I decided sometime last year to re-watch all of the Coen brothers’ movies in chronological order. I just watched FARGO (1996), and while my relationship to each of their movies made before O BROTHER are much shallower (or non-existent: I had never seen BLOOD SIMPLE, RAISING ARIZONA, BARTON FINK, or MILLER’S CROSSING before!), I felt more of a disconnect from O BROTHER and the vibe it used to have than I have felt from the vibes of basically all of those other movies. I think I feel this way for the one reason I just touched on: I have seen O BROTHER the most, and I have the deepest, longest relationship to it, and I have had the most opportunity to change. It is a great experiment to watch all of their movies, and to have different, or new, relationships to each one. I’ll be watching THE BIG LEBOWSKI any day now, if anyone wants to join!
I also noticed, with the help of several long conversations with my friend Al, George Clooney’s performance, which is not a giant leap for him creatively, more of a character that felt written for him specifically. He looked the part, and his physical performance as a singer, a dancer, a dirty pseudo-intellectual ambling around the Mississippi, was effective and fun. But I can agree with Al that the character, and the casting, and the performance did not feel particularly inspired. The rest of the cast, filled with Coen brothers’ greats, knocks it out of the park. That is, perhaps, the greatest strength of the filmmakers: their always deep bench of memorable characters.
The music, which is the longest lasting legacy of the film, is surprisingly slight in the film itself, relative to my memory. The soundtrack, of course, is amazing, but its use in the film is sparse. When it becomes diegetic, like in the scene with the sirens, I was able to melt into the experience, leaving my analysis on the side of the road. There is still charm in the performance scenes with the Soggy Bottom Boys, too, but when I watched this movie the first several times and believed the music was being made by the people on screen, that was real magic. Damn you, lip-syncing.
The story, which I was delighted to reveal to my close friends that I didn’t understand for several years, is a playful adaptation of one of our species’ most classic classics, and the nuances of its message and messaging stood much clearer in my adulthood. Of course, watching it again after our country has walked many miles towards facism and authoritarianism lends its own hold over the movie, now, and the bumbling, attention-seeking KKK member who flaunts their beliefs and clan status proudly, while running for election for Governor, is a heavy cross to bear.
Despite all of these felt changes and realizations, the movie remains a blast. It's a collection of bizarre scenes made up to be some kind of cohesive adventure, but even the protagonist admits that it's all a ruse: there is no treasure at the end of the trail. The characters and performances are big and boisterous and purely entertaining, the dialogue is bizarre and delightful, the cinematography and coloring are strange and interesting — no movie has ever looked like this — the music rocks, and it can make you think about the real world, your real life, which I count as praise.
With the credits having rolled, I think this was the perfect selection for this project. I have grown older, and in doing so my new wisdom has created entries into story and craft that I have never had before, but it has also hardened me and distanced me from the deepest experiences of movie magic. I think we can still tap into that magic, if we can practice the skill of willful ignorance and intentional openness, and by practicing acceptance of who we used to be, and of who we have become. 11 year old Bobby loved this movie to death, and I still have his wisdom and perspective and love and joy in me, even if it is frozen in amber, collecting some dust.
Are we sure O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? was good?
Verdict: yes.
Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you pop this movie in sometime soon, and see how it makes you feel, and see how much you can let yourself feel.
This series will continue, and if you are interested in watching the next selection before I spoil it with a review, I’ll just let you know what the movie will be, right now:
M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS (2002)
TTFN,
bobby