While flipping through the cable channels one night when I was home alone and Reed was in the hospital, I came across the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? I have to admit I was hooked from the start. I must have seen the movie a half-dozen times now and recently I pondered why I enjoy it so much.
The movie is loosely (make that VERY loosely) based on Homer’s The Odyssey. While searching for buried treasure in 1930’s Depression-era Mississippi, three escaped convicts fall (literally) into one strange situation after another.
The hero is one Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney), a slick-tongued wise guy with a thing about hair pomade who talks his chain-gang buddies, Pete and Delmar, into escaping with him to go after some buried treasure that he knows of. Along the way they encounter a prophetic blind man, a black man who sold his soul to the devil, a trio of sexy sirens, crooked politicians, a manic-depressive bank robber, a KKK rally... and the list goes on and on.
I love this hero and his no-nonsense humanist/atheistic approach to life. He likes to take a sensible and scientific approach to things and isn’t taken in by the lure of religion. One scene has our trio watching a hoard of people being baptized in a river. Pete and Delmar eagerly join in but Everett refuses to go.
Pete: Hell, at least it woulda washed away the stink of that pomade.
Everett: Join you two ignorant fools in a ridiculous superstition? Thank you anyway. And I like the smell of my hair treatment — the pleasing odor is half the point. You two are just dumber’n a bag of hammers.
Everett: Well ain’t it a small world, spiritually speakin’! Pete and Delmar just been baptized and saved! I guess I’m the only one here who remains unaffiliated...
I suppose the reason I enjoyed this movie so much, is that it’s refreshing to see a skeptic portrayed in a positive light as the hero of the story. Everett is not a brooding, gloomy skeptic (as is usually presented by Hollywood) — he is bright, intelligent, optimistic, and generally HAPPY.
He doesn’t really waver from his viewpoint, as so often happens in other movies. Too often, the atheist has a “revelation” and by the end of the story, finds himself believing in God. The atheist is portrayed as wrong, and must be “redeemed”.
Towards the end of the movie the boys find themselves in the middle of a valley that the Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA) is about to flood. They are captured by their pursuer, and are about to be hung. Lacking anything better to do, Everett joins his sidekicks in praying for rescue. At this moment, the valley is flooded. They get trapped in the onrush of water, but all of them manage to make it to the surface.
Everett: Aw, don’t be ignorant, Delmar. I told you they was gonna flood this valley.
Delmar: That ain’t it!
Pete: We prayed to God and he pitied us!
Everett: It just never fails; once again you two hayseeds are showin’ how much you want for innalect. There’s a perfectly scientific explanation for what just happened.
Pete: That ain’t the tune you were singin’ back there at the gallows!
Everett: Well any human being will cast about in a moment of stress. No, the fact is, they’re flooding this valley so they can hydro-electric up the whole durned state. Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin’ basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason — like the one they had in France — and not a moment too soon...
Hello. My name is Angela Christine Byers (yes, my mother actually named me “Angel of Christ”), and I am an atheist.
Delmar: You should a joined us, Everett. It couldn’t a hurt none.
They soon pick up a strange black man along the roadside and ask him what he was doing out in the middle of nowhere. Once again Everett is not shy about showing how he feels about religion.
Tommy: I had to be at that crossroads las’ midnight to sell mah soul to the devil.
The movie continues as Everett and his crew stumble into one situation after another. All along Everett remains the consummate skeptic and has no problems speaking his mind. At one point they come across a Bible salesman who tells Everett that in these times of “want and woe” there is money to be made in religion and he’ll show him how. Eager to make a buck off of the weak-minded, Everett happily goes along with the salesman.
Delmar: A miracle! It was a miracle!
That’s what I like about movies......they allow us to dream.
Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Angela C. Byers
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Angela C. Byers