O Brother
I visited the guy this past weekend that I grew up with. While we were eating supper and relating people we had run across over the years, we got on to a movie he saw that reminded of some characters in our past. He lent me the video and I've now seen it three times in five days and will view it with my boys tomorrow night.
I don't do such like I used to, but still listen to one song for over an hour straight, or see a movie back to back to back. This was one of them, and even then I backwarded it in a few spots to revisit them two or three times.
I loved the setting for one thing. Depression era rural Mississippi. My mother spent a lot of her early childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi. They farmed there. Until her mother divorced and moved them to West Texas to be with kin. But a lot of those days were just typical rural South, much like what I grew up in, even if not as extreme as time and place of the movie.
But it was more than that. It was the music. I'm buying the DVD of this movie, but also Emmy Lou Harris put out an album based on the soundtrack for this. I looked it up on Amazon.com. I love her anyway and she's even older than me and from rural Alabama, so it's easy to assume the movie, especially the music, affected her as it did me.
Like rereading a book, you notice little details you missed the first time. This is a comedy starring George Clooney, John Turturo, Tim Blake Nelson (by far the best actor here, even as great, almost perfect as the others were), John Goodman, Holly Hunter, among others, but still I wondered, where did they get the idea for this. Somehow it was trying to relate something, and it used more than setting, it had touches of surrealism in it. It used a bit of poetic license too in that W. Lee 'Pappy' O'Daniel was the governor when actually he was a Texas governor from that general time period, and he was theming 'You Are My Sunshine', which was the Louisiana governor of ten years later who wrote it, theme song. But that's what the facts are there for, to borrow, in the literary world. Even had a blues singer sell his soul to the devil, like the legend is Robert Johnson did. I have Johnson's entire collection on CD. I knew he was from Mississippi, but now indirectly in a movie somehow. I'm sure it was also inspired by the legend of Elvis Presley of Tupelo in the way they had the Soggy Mountain Boys cut a record and then be out of contact with it's success, which snuck up on them and caught them totally by surprise. Elvis could not be contacted for awhile how impressed they were with his amateur cut of a recording. Then when he recorded for real, the success was so rampant and breathtaking that Elvis nor anybody else could grasp what was taking place. His girlfriend went on a two week trip to Florida and by the time she got back Elvis was sweeping Memphis blind and she had no idea. That was in the movie too in its own sweet way.
The second time I saw it I noticed a credit, based on 'The Oddessey' by Homer. I read the Oddessey and Iliad in Junior High growing up, even Omar Khayyan stuff, of which I have volumes of him now. Anyway, I wondered if that was more surrealistic slapstick, even though I noticed even the first time a scene about some 'Mississippi' Sirens, they even used that word.
So, there probably was some kind of message in there too, but it may have been just for fun, for art, for adventure. I love that to death. Just take an idea, a subject, name it, and write a story, but do it well. Just love that to death. Maybe someone could do something, for instance, about Aztecs or Mayans even, you never know.
But back to the music. It was of the times, hillbillyish. Lots of Gospel. I just melted through the ever loving floor. Even tears. Some I've heard before, some never ever and it just grabbed you and took you over. Beautiful beautiful stuff. There was a baptism scene and even though comedy was going on around it, the baptismal itself, with music, made me want to cry.
Some of the music, actually, reminded me of some of my barnstorming days in Switzerland, where I had a Country Band, traditional, old time, much like in the movie. We sang hillbilly, bluegrass, Gospel, and Western Swing, in front of the Swiss god and everybody. Scenes in the movie hit a bit close even. There are so many musicians where any kind of song is instinctive, the musician can play it from scratch, barely knowing it, or sometimes not at all. I pulled some stunts just like they did, trying to get noticed, exposed. I wish I had thought of what the guy that sang 'In The Jailhouse Now' did, by saying, 'it's in the neighborhood of B'. I always knew my keys for any song I sang, just in case you got that split second chance somewhere, anywhere, including with other people's bands. If they never heard of the song, which was often, you would hum just a bit of it, give them the key, and take off. And they could by God keep up. I could even signal to them for an instrumental of a song they never played before, and on cue, they could play it. When they do this stuff in the movie, believe it. God is in music and those who release it. It was so glorious. Best days of my entire forever life. That is my heaven. God, up there, that's my heaven. I'll do what you want. Just let it be that way for me.
There are so many angles to God and that got me focused on the subject. Our mortal minds try putting God in a bottle, almost turning him into a god sometimes. The real One out there, something comes along in some unique way that gets your attention, that moves you beyond description, that gets past the memorized verses, and dogmatisms. I don't know if this movie was supposed to do any of that, but it worked with me. Plus it was just so funny and entertaining also. Sort of like life. There's God, then there's the everyday, seen through everyday eyes, until God pierces through somewhere somehow. It's almost surreal.
A most beautiful part is where in the background Alison Kraus sings 'I'll Fly Away'. They also ended the movie with this in part too. A verse especially sticks out.
When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird
From these prison walls I'll fly
I'll fly away.
That is so Christian. But in my dealings also with Eastern Religions and Gnostic philosophies, they touch on this aspect even more. So many aspects of our religion intertwine like that verse with others. Some think it is influence of one on another. But I think it is the truth singing through all.
I don't do such like I used to, but still listen to one song for over an hour straight, or see a movie back to back to back. This was one of them, and even then I backwarded it in a few spots to revisit them two or three times.
I loved the setting for one thing. Depression era rural Mississippi. My mother spent a lot of her early childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi. They farmed there. Until her mother divorced and moved them to West Texas to be with kin. But a lot of those days were just typical rural South, much like what I grew up in, even if not as extreme as time and place of the movie.
But it was more than that. It was the music. I'm buying the DVD of this movie, but also Emmy Lou Harris put out an album based on the soundtrack for this. I looked it up on Amazon.com. I love her anyway and she's even older than me and from rural Alabama, so it's easy to assume the movie, especially the music, affected her as it did me.
Like rereading a book, you notice little details you missed the first time. This is a comedy starring George Clooney, John Turturo, Tim Blake Nelson (by far the best actor here, even as great, almost perfect as the others were), John Goodman, Holly Hunter, among others, but still I wondered, where did they get the idea for this. Somehow it was trying to relate something, and it used more than setting, it had touches of surrealism in it. It used a bit of poetic license too in that W. Lee 'Pappy' O'Daniel was the governor when actually he was a Texas governor from that general time period, and he was theming 'You Are My Sunshine', which was the Louisiana governor of ten years later who wrote it, theme song. But that's what the facts are there for, to borrow, in the literary world. Even had a blues singer sell his soul to the devil, like the legend is Robert Johnson did. I have Johnson's entire collection on CD. I knew he was from Mississippi, but now indirectly in a movie somehow. I'm sure it was also inspired by the legend of Elvis Presley of Tupelo in the way they had the Soggy Mountain Boys cut a record and then be out of contact with it's success, which snuck up on them and caught them totally by surprise. Elvis could not be contacted for awhile how impressed they were with his amateur cut of a recording. Then when he recorded for real, the success was so rampant and breathtaking that Elvis nor anybody else could grasp what was taking place. His girlfriend went on a two week trip to Florida and by the time she got back Elvis was sweeping Memphis blind and she had no idea. That was in the movie too in its own sweet way.
The second time I saw it I noticed a credit, based on 'The Oddessey' by Homer. I read the Oddessey and Iliad in Junior High growing up, even Omar Khayyan stuff, of which I have volumes of him now. Anyway, I wondered if that was more surrealistic slapstick, even though I noticed even the first time a scene about some 'Mississippi' Sirens, they even used that word.
So, there probably was some kind of message in there too, but it may have been just for fun, for art, for adventure. I love that to death. Just take an idea, a subject, name it, and write a story, but do it well. Just love that to death. Maybe someone could do something, for instance, about Aztecs or Mayans even, you never know.
But back to the music. It was of the times, hillbillyish. Lots of Gospel. I just melted through the ever loving floor. Even tears. Some I've heard before, some never ever and it just grabbed you and took you over. Beautiful beautiful stuff. There was a baptism scene and even though comedy was going on around it, the baptismal itself, with music, made me want to cry.
Some of the music, actually, reminded me of some of my barnstorming days in Switzerland, where I had a Country Band, traditional, old time, much like in the movie. We sang hillbilly, bluegrass, Gospel, and Western Swing, in front of the Swiss god and everybody. Scenes in the movie hit a bit close even. There are so many musicians where any kind of song is instinctive, the musician can play it from scratch, barely knowing it, or sometimes not at all. I pulled some stunts just like they did, trying to get noticed, exposed. I wish I had thought of what the guy that sang 'In The Jailhouse Now' did, by saying, 'it's in the neighborhood of B'. I always knew my keys for any song I sang, just in case you got that split second chance somewhere, anywhere, including with other people's bands. If they never heard of the song, which was often, you would hum just a bit of it, give them the key, and take off. And they could by God keep up. I could even signal to them for an instrumental of a song they never played before, and on cue, they could play it. When they do this stuff in the movie, believe it. God is in music and those who release it. It was so glorious. Best days of my entire forever life. That is my heaven. God, up there, that's my heaven. I'll do what you want. Just let it be that way for me.
There are so many angles to God and that got me focused on the subject. Our mortal minds try putting God in a bottle, almost turning him into a god sometimes. The real One out there, something comes along in some unique way that gets your attention, that moves you beyond description, that gets past the memorized verses, and dogmatisms. I don't know if this movie was supposed to do any of that, but it worked with me. Plus it was just so funny and entertaining also. Sort of like life. There's God, then there's the everyday, seen through everyday eyes, until God pierces through somewhere somehow. It's almost surreal.
A most beautiful part is where in the background Alison Kraus sings 'I'll Fly Away'. They also ended the movie with this in part too. A verse especially sticks out.
When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird
From these prison walls I'll fly
I'll fly away.
That is so Christian. But in my dealings also with Eastern Religions and Gnostic philosophies, they touch on this aspect even more. So many aspects of our religion intertwine like that verse with others. Some think it is influence of one on another. But I think it is the truth singing through all.
posted by CottonSr @ 8:06 AM
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