O Brother, Where Art Thou

Now that a few years have gone by, we can set aside some of the fuss and hype this generated when new and just appreciate it for the wonderful movie that it is.

The fuss, at the time, was mostly about the soundtrack, a collection of "old timey" folk/country music that was enough of a big deal to merit its own tour. The music is certainly fine and authentic and unlike most of what we ever hear, but I suspect that people were mostly responding to how completely woven into the film it was. The Coen Brothers have created a completely different type of movie musical here-- not the transplanted Broadway musical of a Disney nor the movie-length music video of a Top Gun, but a movie in which the music helps to tell the story while revealing its heart.

Not that this is a movie that is deep or serious. The Coen's have moved the Odyssey into Depression-era South and turned Odysseus (Ulysses) into an escaped convict. The result is rollicking, free-wheeling, hearty story-telling.

Casting is pitch-perfect. George Clooney is at his absolute best, a performance of a dim-witted con artist that is so great that he and the Coen's have since made two efforts to reproduce the magic (they failed both times, so do not pre-judge this movie based on those). The movie is heart-achingly beautiful, laugh-out-loud funny, and eminently quotable ("it's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart").

One of my most favorite films ever, and one which really has no peer. A truly unique movie.

Nanking

Much has been written and filmed about the Rape of Nanking, one horrifying episode in the long strong of horrifying episodes that was WWII. But whether you are familiar with the history or not, this documentary is worth a look.

The contemporary actors that you see listed play the parts of historical figures in "talking head" presentations of those peoples' words captured in letters and journals. These "interviews" are interspersed with interviews with real survivors from both sides of events.

There are aspects of the situation that are strikingly heroic. When the Japanese descend upon Nanking, thousands of residents are gathered into a safety zone created by a coalition of American missionaries and German businessmen (how jarring to see one man try to save Chinese by putting them under a swastica)

The agonizing daily struggles, the suffering, the death, the torture-- the horror of these events is almost unimaginable, and the aftermath is heartbreaking. This is a moving and effective piece of work, an important film that is not easy to watch (the bits of the actual footage smuggled out of the city is almost unbearable), but which is necessary to see.