(Excerpt from a longer essay on Depression Era filmmaking):

The Coen Brother’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a difficult film to categorize, in part because it implants the mythology of Homer’s Odyssey into an already mythicized Depression-era South and because its tongue-in-cheek humor so effortlessly gives way to poignant drama and period musical pieces throughout.  It uses the Depression and Southern landscape as a background for the protagonist’s travels to take place.  Issues of the time such as racism, religious hypocrisy and political scandal come to the forefront only inasmuch as they affect the men’s physical journey and spiritual transformation.  It is as much a story about the Depression as it is a faithful adaptation of the Homer novel, which is not to suggest that it’s not concerned with either but that it’s interested in using them to tell an entertaining story that changes and expands on a historical period that has, in the past 75 years, been built into a myth almost as grand as the Old West.

This new myth plays the stereotypes for laughs, but also portrays the powerful spirituality which pervades the South to this day.  By injecting more myth into the narrative, they expose both the truths and lies of the old myth, some of which are absurd and others an inexplicable reality.  If the Coen’s are offering a new take on 1930s America, they are doing so not by harshly criticizing institutional corruption but by redefining the importance of music and spirituality as a tool for progression amongst the systematic corruption.  In this sense, their technique is more reminiscent of Sturges than Capra.  The ridicule of those in power and alignment with the less fortunate is a typically Capra theme, however the Coen’s, like Sturges, are not interested in making message movies.  Whereas many of Capra’s films focus on the message and build stories around them, Sturges weaves them into tightly constructed, comical narratives.  Even the more prominent social commentary in his wartime Eddie Bracken films, Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle at Morgan’s Creek, feels like an afterthought to the actual comedy.  Like Sturges, the brothers focus on the structure of their stories and the originality of their characters more than any deep, penetrating social messages.  Although its filmmaking conventions are reminiscent of Sturges, O Brother, Where Art Thou? reinvents the time period in a way that is wholly their own.