O Brother Where Art Thou Analysis

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O Brother, Where Art Thou 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 …show more content…

During the scene, there is a shot where a huge cross that has been lit on fire by the KKK members is the main focus and the members are in the background performing their ritual. This is done to symbolize that the KKK members are doing something wrong in the name of goodness, which ties into what George Clooney did to his two partners. He lied and told them he had a buried treasure somewhere and if they helped him escape he would share it with them. The truth is that there was no money and he needed to escape to get to his family to stop his wife from getting married again. This compares to what the KKK members tried to do to Tommy in that they believed their purpose was more important than hurting someone. Even though Clooney was not killing or physically hurting anyone, he hurt his partners a tacked on years of their jail sentence by convincing them to escape. Nonetheless, he did something wrong to achieve something he believed was more important. In conclusion, the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou” is a prime example of the use of cinematography. The fact that the director can tie a whole film’s meaning and patterns into one scene is phenomenal. The use of framing and depth of field in the KKK scene embody the theme of the film, “O Brother, Where Art

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