O Brother Where Art Thou?

"O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU" "O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU" By Ethan Coen and Joel Coen BLACK In black, we hear a chain-gang chant, many voices together, spaced around the unison strike of picks against rock. A title burns in: O muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending... A wanderer, harried for years on end... On the sound of an impact we cut to: A PICK splitting a rock. As the chant continues, wider angles show the chain-gang at work. They are black men in bleached and faded stripes, chained together, working under a brutal midday sun. It is flat delta countryside; the straight-ruled road stretches to infinity. Mounted guards with shotguns lazily patrol the line. The chain-gang chant is regular and, it seems, timeless. We slowly fade out, returning to BLACK The last of the voices fades. After a long beat we hear the guitar introduction to Harry McClintock's 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain.' A WHEAT FIELD A road cuts across the middle background. Noonday sun beats down. We hear the distant picks and shovels of men at work and see, rising above ground level, the occasional upraised pick and spade heaving dirt. Men are digging a ditch alongside the road. After a long beat, three men pop up in the wheat field in the middle foreground. They wear faded stripes and grey duck- billed caps. They scurry abreast toward the camera, throwing an occasional glance back at the ditch-diggers. A clanking sound accompanies their run.