Ethan and Joel Coen, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?
” (Touchstone Films, due for release Dec. 21) Three white prisoners escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the middle of the Depression and run straight into a series of blackouts about old-time music — starting when they stop their jalopy to pick up a young black man in suit and tie, bluesman Tommy Johnson, fresh from selling his soul to the devil for guitar prowess and ready to rock. Unlike the younger Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson (“Cool Drink of Water Blues,” 1928, though here he’s given Skip James’ music to play) actually bragged of the transaction. (What could be cooler?) When in the Coen brothers’ version he’s seized by the Ku Klux Klan for ritual sacrifice, he figures it’s just payback coming sooner than he bargained for. It’s a scene that recalls “The Birth of a Nation,” but it’s so culturally blasphemous there are really no precedents for it. In a clearing in the dead of night, hundreds of Klansmen in pure white robes whirl about like a college marching band at halftime, ex
