Summary
Elsewhere, a police dog comes upon an empty container of pomade that Everett left behind. The camera pans up to the clenched fist of one of the policemen; he is holding one of Everett’s old hairnets. The scene shifts abruptly to the three men driving down the road; Pete and Delmar believe that their baptisms have completely cleaned their records, but Everett informs them that they are still wanted by the law. They see a black man with a guitar at a four-corner intersection, and Delmar tells Everett to pull over and pick him up. Delmar tells him they’ll give him a ride. The hitchhiker introduces himself as Tommy Johnson, and explains that he was at the intersection because he was supposed to be there the previous night to “sell [his] soul to the devil.” When they ask what he got in return for selling his soul, Tommy tells them that the devil made it so that he can play the guitar really well.
Pete wants to know what the devil looks like, and Everett gives him a fairly detailed description. Tommy disagrees, however, and informs the men that the devil is white, “with empty eyes and a big, hollow voice. He love to travel around with a mean old hound.” Tommy then explains that he’s going to Tishomingo, because there’s a man who will pay recording artists. Everett is struck by an idea, and when they get to Tishomingo, they go with Tommy into a small windowless shack that serves as a recording studio. Inside, the blind recording engineer asks who they are, and Everett makes up a name for their musical act, the Soggy Bottom Boys. When they ask how much he pays, the blind engineer asks if they do “Negro songs,” and Everett lies and says that they are all black, except for Tommy. The engineer tells him that they don’t record with black people, and that people want to hear “old time-y” music. Everett insists that they specialize in old-timer music, and Delmar tells the engineer that they aren’t really black.
The scene shifts abruptly and the boys sing “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” They are surprisingly good. Tommy is an excellent guitarist, the engineer is pleased, and pays them well. As they come out of the studio, a number of well-dressed gentlemen are getting out a car in the parking lot. It’s Governor Menelaus, who is going to record an announcement on the radio. The scene shifts and we see Everett looking at a crackling fire as Tommy plays the guitar and sings. When Pete and Delmar bemoan the fact that they haven’t had a good place to sleep in a while, Everett reminds them that they’ll be rich men when they reach the hidden treasure—1.2 million to be exact. Pete says he’s going to use his share of the money to go out west and open a fancy restaurant. He wants nothing more than to be a maitre d’. Delmar says he’s going to go to the bank and pay off his loans so that he can buy back the family farm. “You ain’t no kinda man if you ain’t got land,” he says. Everett tells them that he didn’t have a plan when he first stole the money. Pete notes that this is uncharacteristic for Everett, but they are interrupted by a policeman yelling.
The men go over and crouch in the bushes, looking over at the barn where they’re meant to stay that night. Tommy makes a run for it. A crowd of lawmen has gathered outside the barn, but luckily, the Soggy Bottom Boys aren’t inside it, having made a fire a ways away. Delmar wants to get out of there as soon as possible, but Everett left his pomade in the car. “Don’t be a fool, Everett,” Delmar tells him, and the men make a run for it. The next day, they walk down the road, arguing about what to do next. Everett is optimistic, but Pete doesn’t think they stand a chance. Suddenly, they see a car approaching from behind them. The men stare at it, wondering if its driver is after them. As it pulls up, a friendly-looking man asks if he’s on the road to Itta Bena. Pete and Everett go to talk to him, but Delmar notices that there is a bunch of money flying through the wind. He grabs a bill and stares at it.
As Pete tries to give the man directions, Everett notices a group of cars coming down the road behind them. Sensing they’re lawmen, the convicts jump in the man’s car and they drive away. In the car, Delmar and Pete notice more money flying around and the driver asks if anyone knows how to use a Walter PPK, a kind of pistol. When Delmar points out that there’s a bunch of money flying around, the driver tells him to just stuff it into a bag in the back, before saying, “You boys aren’t bad men, I take it?” The driver then introduces himself as George Nelson, otherwise known as Babyface Nelson, a famous bank robber (and real person). Nelson hangs out the side of the car and asks Everett to steal for him. As the police cars approach, he asks Delmar to hand him a machine gun. Cackling maniacally, Nelson fires the machine gun at the cars, yelling, “Come and get me, coppers!”
The policemen begin shooting at the car as well, as Everett, Delmar, and Pete realize they are hitchhiking with a violent criminal. As the car passes a field full of cows, Nelson yells, “I hate cows more than coppers!” and begins shooting at the cows. The cows begin to go in all directions, wandering onto the road and obstructing the cops from following Nelson’s car. The cop car hits one of the cows and they are left behind as Nelson (and the Soggy Bottom Boys) keep speeding down the dirt road ahead. When they reach Itta Bena, Everett, Delmar, and Pete follow Nelson into a bank—it’s his 3rd robbery in 2 hours. He shoots his machine gun in the air and pilfers a bunch of cash, throwing a bag to Everett. When Everett asks what his plan is, Nelson opens his jacket and reveals a bunch of dynamite. A women being held hostage in the bank turns to someone next to her and asks if Nelson is “Babyface Nelson.” Hearing this, Nelson stops, and demands to know who said so. He evidently doesn’t like the nickname, and yells at the woman who called him “Babyface” that his name is George. Delmar calms him down and leads him out of the bank.
We see the men sitting around a campfire, Pete playing a guitar rendition of “A Man of Constant Sorrow.” While Delmar is excited about the robbery, Nelson is staring off into space, still upset about the fact that someone called him “Babyface.” Nelson then gets up and says he’s going to leave, emptying his pockets of a bunch of the cash he stole. When the men ask where he’s going, he doesn’t respond, just walks away. Delmar is confused and Everett explains, “They say that with the thrill-seeking personality, what goes up must come down. On top of the world one minute, haunted by meekness the next.” They watch as Nelson walks away into the night.
The next day, a farmer watches as a truck approaches. On the back of the truck, someone announces that Homer Stokes is running for governor and says through a megaphone, “Let’s sweep this state clean.” Homer Stokes is running for governor against Menelaus, the man outside the recording studio. The Homer Stokes truck passes the recording studio and the stone-faced farmer watches it pass.
The scene shifts to inside the recording studio, where a man named Mr. French asks the recording engineer how he can do business with the Soggy Bottom Boys. The blind recording engineer tells Mr. French that the Soggy Bottom Boys were black and that they left right after singing. French wants to sign them to a big contract, as their recording is popular throughout the whole region. We see Everett, Delmar, and Pete walking down the road as “I’ll Fly Away” by the Kossoy Sisters plays. We see the men stealing a pie from an open window and running away with it. Delmar leaves some money behind for it. The men sit around a campfire and gleefully eat the pie. When Everett throws a newspaper on the fire, it burns to reveal a headline that reads, “Soggy Bottom Boys A Sensation But Who Are They?” We see a woman in a store asking for a record of the Soggy Bottom Boys, and the clerk tells her that they got a new shipment, but they are selling too fast. We see the men playing charades around a campfire, then eventually hitchhiking on the back of a truck. Everett buys more pomade, and the men steal another car.
Analysis
Even though the stakes are often high in O Brother Where Art Thou, the film maintains an insistent sense of humor. One particular comedic facet is Everett’s feminine vanity, his desire to make his hair always look perfect. The joke then becomes that his vanity and use of various hair products is not simply a failure of masculinity, but a failure in that it tips off the cops to the trio’s whereabouts. This section opens with a police dog coming upon an empty tin of pomade. The camera dramatically pans upward towards the clenched fist of a lawman who’s in pursuit of the criminals. The music is a dramatic tremor, and we expect to see some kind of gun or at least something threatening. Instead, he is clenching one of Everett’s discarded hairnets in his fist. The contradiction between the drama of the situation and the sight gag of a discarded hairnet typifies the comedic elements of the film.
While the film's historical setting doesn’t seem especially important at first, the Great Depression begins to come into greater focus as we learn more about the trio of men. All of them dream of having enough money to transcend their lives of crime and live as respectable members of society. Pete wants to open a restaurant out west, and he almost tears up as he imagines a life in which he gets every meal for free. Delmar’s greatest wish is to pay back his loans and buy back the family farm, which he evidently lost in the Great Depression. Everett doesn’t quite have a plan for what to do with the money. Thus, we see the three escaped convicts not as inherently devious or nefarious gentlemen, but rather as victims of a historical crisis who feel cheated of their livelihoods. The Great Depression hangs over the narrative of the film, a disastrous event that has made the world more lawless.
As lighthearted as the film is, it is also quite spooky, and features many instances of seemingly harmless scenarios being much darker than they seem. While the trio of feckless protagonists is endearing and often goofy, the unusual and menacing world of the Depression-era South is filled with unsavory characters and a constant threat of violence. People they meet along the way may smile and engage in niceties, but these courtesies can never be trusted. This phenomenon is comedically revealed in the interaction at the recording studio. When the recording engineer asks Everett if they are “negroes,” Everett assumes that the engineer is looking for “negroes” and lies that they are all black. The engineer clarifies that he doesn’t like to record black people, revealing himself to be virulently racist—and so the convicts assure him that they are in fact white. The film is often revealing the unsavory quality lurking underneath a seemingly harmless veneer, which creates a somewhat unsettling quality, even in the midst of a great deal of humor.
The intersection between humorous and unsettling occurs yet again when the boys hitchhike the day after recording the song. When George Nelson first pulls up, he has the sunny expression and baby fat of a kind-hearted country gentleman. However, as they drive down the road, his true identity is slowly revealed. Delmar is the first to notice all of the money flying around, evidence of the fact that it is stolen. When George asks if they know how to use a certain kind of pistol and questions whether or not they are bad guys, we begin to see that George himself is a criminal of some kind. As he leans out of the moving car and begins shooting at the cops (and then a herd of cows) with a machine gun, it becomes clear that he is a true maniac and a bad man. Indeed, he is “Babyface Nelson,” a famous American bank robber who was at large in the 1930s. The contradiction between innocent and despicable that the Coen Brothers so love to exploit is self-evident just in Babyface Nelson’s name; he’s a machine-gun-toting maniac, but his name (and face) are undeniably infantilizing, a fact which he almost cannot bear.
Curiously enough, the film is just as much about music as it is about the ragtag journey of a group of escaped convicts. The soundtrack is filled with traditional bluegrass songs that evoke the old South in which the narrative takes place. Music often transports the viewer into a new stage of the story. When the trio notices the congregation of people getting baptized, they hear them singing first— the chorus from the song, “Down in the River,” a traditional Christian folk hymn. In this section, they happen upon a black man named Tommy who sold his soul to the devil in order to be a good guitarist, and they follow Tommy to a recording studio where they take on the fake personas of the “Soggy Bottom Boys.” Ironically enough, the Soggy Bottom Boys are good, and they manage to snare the attention of a producer who has no idea that they’re convicts on the run. In the midst of the chaos and violence of the story, music serves to connect strangers and, funnily enough, looks like it might be the most promising way for Everett, Delmar, and Pete to make honest money in the midst of the Depression.
