Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12885 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-04-09
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Only Joel and Ethan Coen, masters of quirky and ultra-stylish genre subversion, would dare nick the plotline of Homer's Odyssey for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their comic picaresque saga about three cons on the run in 1930s Mississippi. Our wandering hero in this case is one Ulysses Everett McGill, a slick-tongued wise guy with a thing for hair pomade (George Clooney, blithely sending up his own dapper image) who talks his chain-gang buddies (Coen-movie regular John Turturro and newcomer Tim Blake Nelson) to light out after some buried loot he claims to know of. En route they come up against a prophetic blind man on a railroad truck, a burly one-eyed baddie (the ever-magnificent John Goodman), a trio of sexy singing ladies, a blues guitarist who's sold his soul to the devil, a brace of crooked politicos on the stump, a manic-depressive bank robber, and--well, you get the idea. Into this, their most relaxed film yet, the Coens have tossed a beguiling ragbag of inconsequential situations, a wealth of looping, left-field dialogue and a whole stash of gags both verbal and visual. O Brother (the title's lifted from Preston Sturges' classic 1941 comedy Sullivan's Travels) is furthermore graced with glowing, burnished photography from Roger Deakins and a masterly soundtrack from T-Bone Burnett that pays loving homage to American 30s folk-styles: blues, gospel, bluegrass, jazz and more. And just to prove that the brothers haven't lost their knack for bad-taste humour, we get a Ku Klux Klan rally choreographed like something between a Nuremberg rally and a Busby Berkeley musical. --Philip Kemp

On the DVD: This two-disc set duplicates the original single-disc release of the film which included a handful of cast and crew interviews, and adds an additional disc with more interviews, two brief behind-the-scenes featurettes about the production design and the post-production digital colouring of the film, a couple of storyboard-to-scene comparisons and a music video of "Man of Constant Sorrow". There's also a 16-minute documentary to promote the companion Down from the Mountain concert. Frankly there's not a lot here to justify spreading it across two discs: a more pleasing not to say generous offering would have been to cram all these extras onto Disc 1 and give us Down from the Mountain as the second disc. --Mark Walker

Video Description
DVD Special Features:

Cast and Crew Interviews with George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro, Holly Hunter, Michael Badalucco, Chris Thomas King and the Coen Brothers
Original Trailer
TV Spots
English subtitles
Dolby Digital 5.1

Synopsis
Joel and Ethan Coen transport Homer's ODYSSEY to the depression-era South in the silly, fun comedy O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and mythical
Loosely based on the Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou tells the story of three petty criminals who have escaped prison in order to claim a haul of treasure before it ends up at the bottom of a lake which is about to be created by the building of a new dam, and the many sidetracks and adventures they encounter on the way. Clooney is brilliant as Ulysses Everett McGill and the film's soundtrack is wonderful - beautifully evoking the depression-era America in which the film is set. A hilarious, beautifully shot and mythical film.

Best film I've seen for ages
I'm not film enthusiast, and had never even heard of this one until I saw it on the listing for my 9 hour flight home from India. Flipping through the channels, the music made me stop at this one. Usually I have a hard time staying awake for a whole film on a night flight, but I just loved this film - so much so that I watched it all again 4 hours later, in preference to any of the others on offer. I have never, ever watched a film twice in one day before! I definitely want the soundtrack.

A maelstrom of mirth and music
It's a long time since I read Homer's Odyssey, so perhaps it's not surprising that I can't remember seeing any of this story in that story - well, hardly any. There's the blind seer, the sirens, the Cyclops, Pete seeming to be changed into a frog (the sort of trick Circe liked to pull), the fact that Everett's first name is Ulysses and his wife's name is Penny (Penelope), and a temporary associate of the boys attacks a herd of cattle ... . So, a few points of contact with The Odyssey, but it really only fits where it touches. But who cares? This is a brilliant film. Best I've seen in ages. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get round to watching it - probably put off by the title. Silly me. I loved The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona - all fantastic Coen Bros films with dopey sounding titles. I should have just trusted them and watched this film years ago. To make up for lost time I watched it 3 times in the first week I had the DVD and kept skipping back to the beginning of the parts where The Soggy Bottom Boys sang "Man of Constant Sorrow". Fabulous music. And the dialogue is so clever, especially when you consider that the protagonists are more than slightly gormless - and they still give the impression of being idiots even whilst delivering these sparkling lines. Great comic acting. Great acting regardless of category, in fact. Another Coen master piece!