Coen Brothers: Ranking Their Films From Worst To Best

3. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

While Barton Fink represents the height of frustratingly oblique, decadent, symbolic storytelling, O Brother, Where Art Thou? goes a long way to representing the opposite. Hung loosely off of Homer's Odyssey, one would think that such a film would easily get bogged down in symbolism, allegories, complex words and things, becoming more like Barton Fink in the employment of said tropes, but not so. The Coens, as they always do, get bogged down in the right thing: people. Ulysses Everett McGill, played by George Clooney at his most manic, escapes a chain gang with Pete and Delmar, played by John Turturro and the slackjawed Tim Blake Nelson. The ensuing romp is equal parts treasure hunt, fugitive flight, and just going wherever the wind takes them. There is a montage not long after the escape that captures a beautiful kind of free-spirited living, "steeped in old-timey tradition" of the American heartland. Though many try, few films capture that feeling - and O Brother manages it with a montage, no less. Apart from all of that, O Brother boasts one of the greatest film soundtracks of all time. "Man of Constant Sorrow" is the obvious hit, but Chris Thomas King's rendition of the Skip James classic "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" plays into that free-spirited feeling I described in a simple scene where the fugitives sit around a fire at night and discuss what they'll do with their respective shares of the treasure.