Redemption, in literature and film, is a poignant theme that conveys a sense of morality within character(s). It focuses on how a character can be forgiven for all of their wrongdoings, especially after communicating with God. The film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” displays the theme of redemption at various points throughout the movie. In a series of loosely tied vignettes, the film depicts Ulysses Everett McGill, Pete Hogwallop, and Delmar O'Donnell as its heroes as they try to escape the law and venture around the state looking for a treasure. Along the way, they encounter characters similar to those in “The Odyssey” such as sirens, a cyclop and a blind prophet. Directed by the Coen brothers, film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” uses notable …show more content…
Instead of containing the usual portrayal of color such that of real life, the Coen brothers modified the coloring of the film to a vibrant gold, sepia-toned color. This effect of manipulating the color is advantageous in that it gives the viewer the feeling of looking through an old photo album. While there is a painting-like aspect to this, it is mostly adjusted to look like the photographs of the 1930s and the Dust Bowl as opposed to how the reality really was. Like anything else, color can provide one with emotions and essentially, one of the most effective sequences throughout the film, is the transition of color at various points. The transition of color also draws attention to the main theme of the film. For example, at the end, as the girls are being led by a rope and Penny and Everett are walking down a street, there is almost a different coloring in that scene than in other parts of the film. In that scene, Penny, holding a baby, is arguing with Everett about the wedding ring as the girls follow behind them. After the girls cross the railroad track and the man operating a one man rail car proceeds off into the distance, the color fades from a sepia tone to a black and white with a significant amount of green. The trees emerge in a luxuriant way from the background and the screen fades to black. Deepening the theme of redemption, the scene also symbolizes Everett’s redemption into his old life with his wife, Penny, and their
Brother, Where Art Thou? These stories share crucial components of the hero’s journey whether it be “crossing the first threshold,” where the main characters of both stories begin their long adventure that transforms them into heroes; “the supreme ordeal,” where the main characters are both deprived of the opportunity to get home sooner; or “return with elixir,” where Odysseus and Ulysses both return to their homes alive from the comfort of their wives. In their major plot points, the novel The Odyssey and the motion picture O Brother convey obvious similarities in key elements of their heroes’ journeys such as “crossing the first threshold,” “the supreme ordeal,” and “return with elixir.” Firstly, the main characters of both stories, Odysseus and Ulysses, share qualities of the “crossing the first threshold” that quite clearly show the similarities in these stories.
“O muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story...Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending...A wanderer, harried for years on end…” (Homer). These are the opening words of The Odyssey. This is also in the opening scene of O Brother Where Art Thou?. O Brother is a reception of the revered story of Odysseus’ journey with a bit of a twist. The works have similarities that only a person well informed of the Odyssey could see. The Odyssey and O Brother highlight the trials of the main character’s journeys. While the Odyssey was written in the eighth century, O Brother is set during the 1930s in the deep south. Each of the trials that the characters face is supposed to make them quit their journey, but they proceed with greater determination.
In both Homer’s The Odyssey and the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? the audience is given an opportunity to experience a spectacular adventure, filled with not only the sense of journey, but also the senses of peril and excitement. A tale about a Greek hero being compared to a film set in Middle America starring three jail-escapees seems rather far-fetched. However, upon closer inspection, both actually share a lot in common. The Odyssey stars Odysseus, a man famous for his heroics in the Trojan War. O Brother, Where Art Thou? shows a bit of a contrast by starring Ulysses, a former convict who escaped and began looking for “A Treasure”. So by default, one would assume that that these two stories would be completely different. However, it ends up being quite the opposite. The two stories are so remarkably alike that it is almost staggering. However, it may not just be simple similarities that make the two so alike. The main reasons why the two characters are so alike are not so much the actions that they take, as oppose to the overall human emotional aspect of the two pieces of work. For example, we see that both Odysseus and Ulysses are invested in their lives with their families, and as such, they never have a moment where they stop thinking about the lives they used to live. Both characters are extremely alike in terms of thoughts, skills, and experiences. They are both profound tacticians, as well as being rather strong and good looking men. So in the end, both of these men have plenty in common on the emotional and psychological levels.
Alistair Deacon from As Time Goes By once said that, “The people in the book need to be people.” The main character in a story or in a play always has to be somewhat likeable or relatable. Who doesn’t like to feel like they can relate to their favorite character in a story? In many cases the authors of stories or books always try to make the reader feel like they are not the only ones with problems or going through a crazy situation. Wanting the reader to become engaged in the characters' conflicts is what they aim for. In Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, many people were gripped by Willy Loman’s, the main character, problems because they too struggle with many of the conflicts that Willy faces. Willy could not keep his life together, failing to see reality and pursuing the wrong dream, with a wrong viewpoint, ended up causing others around him and himself to hurt.
"O Brother, Where Art Thou" by the Coen brothers is a very clever way to interpret the Greek myth the “Odyssey" by Homer. A person may not even realize the connections between the two until they find out they are related. Almost every event and character seen throughout the movie can be related back to an event or character from the “Odyssey”, from the first scene to the last. The similarities between "O Brother, Where Art Thou" and "The Odyssey" range from obvious to obscure.
Being a generally required read, most everyone has heard of The Odyssey by Homer, meanwhile, very few have recognized the connection between it and its partner movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? by the Coen brothers. Being purposely made to portray the large epic, O Brother, Where Art Thou is full of juicy details that one would not truly understand unless they had read the epic. Throughout the movie one can find the original basics that Homer incorporated into The Odyssey with ease. The similarities between the two are quite transparent as well. The movie successfully demonstrates the hospitality found in Greece and portrayed by Homer, the mutual devotion between the company of men being led and Ulysses and Odysseus, and the primary journey found in The Odyssey.
Throughout the history of film, the cinematography of films has been used to illustrate various things. In the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou” one scene exemplifies two types of cinematography marvelously. The purpose of the film is to tell a story about three men trying to achieve their fortune. Throughout the film, they face many challenges and must overcome many obstacles. The film is a telling of the reactions of the characters and how they handle all those obstacles, which is why the Klu Klux Klan scene, near the end of the film, is a good representation of what those men had to overcome. The scene starts out with the men on a form of hill looking down on a lynching. Then they see their friend, Tommy, about
In 1988 a documentary film was released titled “Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser which attributes Monk’s quirky behavior to mental illness. His son T.S. Monk states that his father would endure psychosis on several occasions and reported that his father was hospitalized due to mental illness and it later worsened in the
In this scene, the colors of the shots are dark, considering the rally is during the night. Racism and discrimination is a very dark theme that is explored in the film. There are many man dressed in white cloaks and there is only Pete, Delmar, and Everett trying to save Tommy from being hanged. However, the three men manage to escape with Tommy. The Coen Brothers managed to make this very dark tragedy comedic in it’s own way.
The film O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a reinterpretation of the epic poem The Odyssey. The Coen brothers, writers and directors of the film, did not over analyze their representation. “It just sort of occurred to us after we’d gotten into it somewhat that it was a story about someone going home, and sort of episodic in nature, and it kind of evolved into that,” says Joel Coen in Blood Siblings, “It’s very loosely and very sort of unseriously based on The Odyssey” (Woods 32). O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains ideas from The Odyssey for the sake of modernization and entertainment of an audience that comprehends the allusions to the epic. The Coen brothers utilize elements of Homer’s The Odyssey to improve and to give direction to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a reinterpretation which was made simply to show that an epic-adventure such as The Odyssey could be modernized to apply to modern times.
Homer’s Odyssey is the iconic story of a man’s episodic journey home. The film, O Brother Where Art Thou, is a justifiable homage to the Odyssey because of the many parallels between some of the major characters depicted in the movie and the epic poem. The movie is set in the 1930s in the state of Mississippi, changing the characters in social demeanor, but retaining their motivation and major plot points.
The three themes of “O Brother, Where art Thou?” and “The Adventure of Ulysses” Are pride, journey, and judgment. I think that these three themes are the most important to the two stories because they really describe the lesson and the moral of the story. In the two stories, Ulysses, and Everett (the main characters) show big strives and lessons that we might not see today but that can be very important to our thoughts and decisions that we make in the future.
One of the most obvious portrayals of the bleakness and desperation of the era is the overall faded and washed-out look of the whole film, due to manipulation of the film saturation; the heaviness of it almost cries out to the audience. Though the film was shot during the summer, cinematographer Roger Deakins and Cinesite colorist Julias Friede were able to use digital technology to change the appearance of the colors. “Together, they worked on manipulating the [digital] saturation of the images, and in particular selecting the greens of the trees and grass and turning them into dry browns and yellows” (Escaping, 2). These dry browns and yellows enhance the audience’s impression of the desperation of the characters and the time period. Brown is a prominent color shown not only in the overall appearance but in the specific image of the dry brown of the dirt which also clings to the clothes of the three main characters: Everett, Pete, and Delmar....
Forth are Lighting and color. In case of Lighting, this film uses High key light that makes this film look like natural light and feel warm. In the case of color, some scene of this film use warm color to express love and warmth to audience such as in the wedding scene or some scene use dark color to express about sad feeling such as funeral scene and in scene that Rosie knows her dad was died. I think in some scene if you watch it in HD, it’s very beautiful such as in scene that Rosie drinks a cup of coffee and thinks about the past in sunset time because Lighting and color of sunset time is very
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice the reader is exposed to many major characters such as Elizabeth, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and Charles Bingley, but there are also minor characters that are important to the story too. Throughout Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen uses these minor characters to play significant roles in the lives of the main characters as well as play a symbol of certain themes. The entire novel is filled with many key characters that add to either the story or to the characters personalities and perspectives. Three minor characters that play a small, but significant role in the outcome of many events in Pride and Prejudice are Charlotte Lucas, Lady Catherine, and Miss Bingley. These three characters hold many ideas