O Brother Where Art Thou
In the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou," the Cohen Brothers present to the audience a comedic adventure of three on-the-run jail mate hillbillies led by the hero, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), looking to reclaim a buried treasure. The story takes place back in the days of the Depression-era, Deep South around the 1920s in Mississippi. It is a comedy. The picture is filled with intellectual and witty satire, as well as twists and turns, humorously paralleling scenes and characters from Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey." In the movie, the Cohen Brothers use various elements to capture the attention of the audience. Just as any other directors attempt to do, they aim to draw the audience into the movie and catch the spirit of the southern, Mississippian, Depression-era hillbillies. In order to generate this affect, one of the key elements the Cohen Brothers use is language. More specifically, they use old-fashioned, southern idiomatic dialogue, which is not really used in today's contemporary dialogue. Yet, most are definitely familiar with it, which serves as the common base to carry out the affect. Just by listening to this southern-type language with its southern accents and all its
Throughout the entire picture, there are a countless number of slang phrases, idioms, and euphemisms used. Of course there are the older ones, older meaning more familiar, such as "I reckon," "Howdy," and "Good riddance." These were used in the film, but these phrases are used and can be heard today. Therefore, to get a better taste of the movie, here are some fresher directly quoted idioms from different characters of the movie: "You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers," which is obviously a simile describing how dumb they are. "Some of your foldin' money's done come unstole." Today, this statement grammatically does not make sense. Also, this idiom will not make sense unless the situation is known. In the movie, George has just robbed bags of money from somewhere unknown and the "stolen" money is flying out the window as George and the three jail-mates drive away. The money is flying out of his possession, so it is becoming "unstolen," which today is a non-existing word. Thus it is satirical. In one sense, it mocks the uneducated-ness of folks back in the day. Here is an idiom harder to understand quoted by Ulysses' wife during an argument with Ulysses. "I've spoken my piece and counted to three." In simple terms, she has said all she has to say about the issue, which is her "piece," and she has refle
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Approximate Word count = 893
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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