Odysseus2.0105

Odysseus2.0105_Coen

Infamously, Joel and Ethan Coen claimed not to have read Homer. This film is clearly built upon the Odyssey. A credit slide acknowledges as much. The narrative proper ends and closes with the blind singer pumping his handcar into and then out of the camera. This suggests that the film's story is sung by the bard. Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney) bears the Romans' name for Odysseus, and Penny's name is obviously short for Penelope; the threat of a suitor, the prolix bible-salesman (Goodman as Polyphemus πολυφήμικος), the dangerously distracting Sireens and the acolytes who erase memory of their sins with baptism rather than with lotus. The film is fully and squarely built as an adaptation of the Odyssey. So, THAT OBWAT is an Odyssey adaptation is clear; but, WHY do the Coens adapt it... and WHAT do they say with it? What is their narrative gain?

The Coens' narrative gain is largely cinematic. The unfinished film-within-a-film never made within Preston Sturgess' Sullivan's Travels is made by the Coens in 2000. As Sullivan (Joel McCrea) in Sturgess' film went on the road to find the plight of the common man, here the Coens undertake the same roadtrip among classical, Homeric set-pieces. Such befit the classic nature of a narrative remake. Even if Sturgess did not have the Odyssey in mind, the Coens sieze upon the greatest journey as model for their picaresque passage through Depression-era Mississippi and Tennessee.

Slide by CB modified by RTM.