O, Brother: Where Art Thou? (2000)

O, Brother: Where Art Thou? is a 2000 Comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film is set in 1937 within rural Mississippi during the Great Depression and follows the story loosely based on Homer's Odyssey. The title of the film is reference to the 1941 film Sullivan's Travels where the protagonist wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Starring: George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro, Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Charles Durning, Daniel von Bargen, Wayne Duvall, Ray McKinnon, Michael Badalucco, Stephen Root and Lee Weaver. 

The screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cinematography: Roger Deakins

Editing: Roderick Jaynes and Tricia Cooke

Costume: 

Visual effects:

Acting performance:

Sound design: Noted producer and musician T-Bone Burnett worked with the Coens when the script was still being worked on, and the soundtrack was recorded before filming commenced. The music was originally conceived as a major component of the film and not just as a background to support.

A lot of the music in the film is contemporary folk music, including that of Virginia Bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley. For this the film received positive reviews and the American folk music soundtrack won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001. The original band soon became popular afterwards and the country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film, such as John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Sharp and others, joined together to perform the music from the film in a Down from the Mountain concert tour which was filmed for TV and DVD.

The music selection also includes religious music which include Primitive Baptist and traditional African-American gospel, notably the Fairfield Four, an a cappella quartet that dates back to 1921, appearing in the soundtrack and as gravediggers towards the end of the film.

Production design: The idea for the film was spontaneous and work on the script began way before the start of production in December 1997 and was half-written by May 1998. Joel Coen said in an interview in 2000 that he came to Phoenix to offer the lead role to Clooney in which Clooney agreed immediately without reading the script, staring that he liked even the least successful Coen's films. One of the most notable features of the film is its use of digital colour correction to give the film a sepia-tinted look. Cinematographer Roger Deakins said that "Ethan and Joel favoured a dry, dusty Delta look with golden sunsets. They wanted it to look like an old hand-tinted picture, with the intensity of colour dictated by the scene and natural skin tones that were all shades of the rainbow."

While real-life politics were taken and used in the film, there are obvious differences between the characters in the film and historical political figures.