Now Showing: 13 Days • O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Now Showing
Candid Reviews of Movies Just hitting The Big Screen

by Cole Smithey

13 Days

I’m partial to historically set dramas that reveal qualities of human courage and humanitarian vision pressing through tremendous personal and social obstacles. Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976) is my favorite film of all time, with Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) in second place. Because I was born in the sweltering summer of 1963, I gratefully caught a few months of the Kennedy administration before the most youthful and charismatic President in our nation’s history was assassinated in Texas. Thirteen Days is an ambitiously detailed depiction of the Cuban missile crisis (October, 1962) that digs deep into the hearts and minds of the Kennedy administration to reveal John and Bobby Kennedy’s existential struggle for order in the midst of looming nuclear chaos due to Russia’s offensive weapons build up in Cuba. It’s a lean political thriller that correctly places the demands of a job that a man like George W. Bush appears tragically unprepared to live up to.

Director Roger Donaldson (Dante’s Peak) envelops John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s provident facility for shepherding peace. It’s no secret that Kennedy was hated by many members of his own military staff who not only helped force the ‘Bay of Pigs’ debacle but then blamed their leader. It’s in this antagonistic context of heated war room discussions that Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood - Double Jeopardy) helms the Oval office like a guiding lighthouse beacon. Between the pauses in Kennedy’s open-minded stare and controlled gestures is the certain knowledge that his penetrating eye for clarity will persist. Bruce Greenwood gives an uncanny performance that fulfills the daunting role of John F. Kennedy with vitality and virtue.

Although Kevin Costner’s name sits uncomfortably across the film’s title, his casting as Presidential advisor Kenny O’Donnell serves Thirteen Days well as a key secondary character. It places Costner in an ideal setting for his not-quite leading man talent. Perhaps the problem with Kevin Costner’s career is that he’s been shooting long of the mark by trying to fill leading man shoes that are a half size too big. Even though O’Donnell’s role seems emphasized to give Costner a little more face time, it’s still only there to serve the drama of the docu-styled stream of events under Kennedy’s command. Steven Culp’s (Dead Again) bull’s eye performance as Robert Kennedy also serves to balance the film’s power structure. It shows Costner to be an actor who excels as a team player rather than the leading man that he’s been shoe-horned into too many times to count.

Thirteen Days gets under the skin of the highly codefied language of political protocol and communication to show how the big game was played in the ‘cocktail hour’ days 1962. Thanks to transcripts of secretly made tapes from White House planted bugs during the Cuban missile rises, and Robert Kennedy’s memoir, “Thirteen Days,” screenwriter David Self digests exhaustive research from other sources into a fast paced drama that rings with the truth of a well-constructed documentary.

Although certain facts are kept out of the story to emphasize the dire threat of nuclear conflict at the time, it’s to Self’s credit that the movie keeps its focus on the human element of the story. For example Kennedy’s existing secret plan, “Operation Mongoose,” to control Fidel Castro is never mentioned, and neither is the United States’ vast nuclear prowess over Russia ever defined. Self is interested primarily in the delicate thought processes that went on in preventing a World War III. When Kennedy’s military chiefs ignore the President’s order and escalate the engagement with the Russians to DefCon Two (one step below nuclear war), Kennedy rightly perceives it as an attempted coup and works around his own military to ensure that peaceful resolution is given every chance. It’s a story about a man addressing a severely dreadful problem with every bit of nerve and ethics to guide him, and lead the nation into the future.

For everyone who still grumbles over John Kennedy bringing prostitutes into the White House, or having an affair with Marilyn Monroe, or who still talks about the sleazy bootlegging that John’s father Joseph engaged in, Thirteen Days is one more reminder of why John F. Kennedy was a better President than any we’ve had since. He cared about America more than anyone else, and he had the charm, intellect, and iron will to carry it out.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The fact that the recent Cohen Brothers movie is loosely based on “The Odyssey” by Homer, is such a distant cousin to the movie’s ’20s and ’30s deep South environs that Homer’s original narrative blueprint is barely discernable. Escaped chain gang convicts Everett (George Clooney - Three Kings), Pete (John Turturro - Quiz Show), and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson - Donnie Brasco) chase freedom and buried treasure in the depths of Mississippi like three frenzied Marx Brother rejects on a sight seeing and mystical musical tour of Americana’s dicey underbelly.

Ulysses ‘Everett’ McGill (Clooney) is a Clark Gable-wanna-be with a big smile and a gift of gab that oozes from his lips like hot honey dripping off a busy beehive. As the trio’s leader, Everett is a bottom line man with an answer for everything. Everett pains over his carefully coifed hairdo with constant applications of “Dapper Dan’s” hair pomade, and sleeps in hairnets to keep his smelly image appropriately fresh. When the boys wander into a local radio station where the blind owner pays for musical groups to record songs, the trio dub themselves “The Soggy Bottom Boys” to record a raucous version of “I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow.” The boys get musical accompaniment from a Robert Johnson styled guitar player named Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who’s just sold his soul to the devil down at the mythological ‘crossroads’ in exchange for his exceptional playing skill. Happy to receive 10 dollars apiece and be on their way, the convicts have no idea that their recording will become an overnight success across the southern states.

From its opening, “oo aa” vocally punctuated, chain gang scene to a sequence where the boys run across three bathing sirens of song and sin, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a treasure chest of American folk, blues, and gospel music. Renown musician and record producer T Bone Burnett guides a careful combination of original recordings and newly performed renditions of songs like “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby,” “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and “Down to the River to Pray,” to give the story an aural background that reflects the mindset of its characters. The loyal camaraderie that the convicts share comes off as a symptom of uniform empathy in their subjective subconscious bestowed on them by their chaotic yet spiritually resolved surroundings.

In one glorious scene Delmar sees a riverside baptism taking place and is spiritually lifted to offer himself to be cleansed of his sins. Although Everett scoffs at Delmar’s freshly hewn religious salvation, with articulate words of cynicism, it’s clear that Delmar is intent on starting over and won’t budge from his newfound faith. When a life threatening moment finally comes, the cynical Everett is the first one to drop to his knees and beg God for mercy.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a milestone for the Cohen Brothers. After their lackluster and unbalanced last film The Big Lebowski, the Cohens have struck cinematic gold with a movie that ridicules, reveres, and extemporizes on its subjects while serving as a send up of one of the most famous works of literature. When John Goodman appears as eye-patch-wearing bible thumper named Big Dan Teague, it’s pretty easy to see his status as the ‘Cyclops’ character from “Ulysses.” Goodman’s brief scenes kick the movie up a notch with sheer surprise and bad intention. There’s no forgetting that the old south was an unpredictable and strangely dangerous place to be.

One scene that will no doubt derail the movie for some audiences involves the three buddies coming upon a Ku Klux Klan ceremony in the middle of the woods. The ostentatious gathering of hooded political and social figures quickly turns into a fiery bit of slapstick violence as the boys pull off a rescue that puts an end to the racist festivities. Here the Cohen Brothers execute a flourish of fearless social satire that places the folklore reverie of O Brother into a kind of weird and political arena that permeated their best films (Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, Fargo). O Brother, Where Art Thou? is full of gleeful surprises, and aside from John Turturro’s miscast performance, the movie pays off in unexpected dividends at every twist of its road story plot. “A winna,” as Jack Warner used to say.