Down From The Mountain

Somebody — the Coen Brothers, or maybe their collaborator, music producer T Bone Burnett, it's never quite specified — had a very smart idea: To stage a live concert featuring the American roots music and performers heard on the soundtrack of the Coens' O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? as a benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame. This document of the event, held at the historic Ryman Auditorium on May 24, 2000, isn't great cinema: Frankly, it's shot and edited like a PBS special of average quality. But musically it's often breathtaking, and not solely because it dispenses with O BROTHER's patina of post-modern irony. Structurally, the film is pretty familiar ...