O Brother, Where Art Thou?
19 October, 2008
The storytelling here is easy, the plot suggests itself. But visually, the Coen boys did something spectacular. There is such a supreme understanding of off-screen space. The frame is breached and re-asserted so many times it is difficult to keep track, the world within and beyond the frame is in a constant visual and auditory dialogue. There is very little wrong with the film, and it clearly served as exceptional grounding for their more serious recent work.
Nearly as impressive as their awareness of the frame is their awareness of their palette. The consistent muting of all colors, without playing tricks to make certain things pop, creates an overall more impressive effect than films in which the contrast between muted and bright hues serves to illustrate some superficial point. The subtlety of the color scheme lends an overall mood and an overwhelming sense of the general moral turpitude of every character in the film.
