Summary 
Modernized version of Othello, written by Brad Kaaya, is set within a southern high school basketball team, with a contemporary hip-hop score, vulgar language, drug use, and sex and nudity. Smart new script, told with speed and clarity, focuses on the ambition of the third-best player on the team as he taps into the jealousy and fear of racism within the team's talented star, an outsider with a police record and roots in the ghetto.
Design
Written by Brad Kaaya, directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Released in 2001. 1:34.
Cast
Mekhi Pfeiffer (Odin), Josh Hartnett (Hugo), Julia Stiles (Desi), Martin Sheen (Coach Duke Goulding), Elden Henson (Roger Rodriguez), Andrew Keegan (Michael), Rain Phoenix (Emily), Anthony "A.J." Johnson (Dell), John Heard (Brable), Rachel Schumate (Brandy).
Analysis
Brad Kaaya adapts Shakespeare's Othello into O, directed by Tim Blake Nelson, updating the tragedy to a Charleston, South Carolina U.S. prep school academy, its principal characters teenagers on the Palmetto Grove basketball team. Nelson, the actor who played Delmar in the Coen Brothers' 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou ("we thought you was a horny toad!") films with a graceful camera and a thumping hip-hop musical score. Nelson's movie, barely over ninety minutes and a realistic depiction of modern high school, is taken to tragic extreme, with threads of ambition, jealousy and racism laced with crude language as well as sex and nudity. The film was completed in early 1999 but temporarily shelved by the distributor in the wake of the tragic murders at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Nelson begins O with a blurred extreme close-up image of cooing pigeons within a pen, becoming clearer with focus, the prey for the basketball team mascot, a predator hawk. Josh Hartnett narrates as Hugo, the insidious Iago from Othello - "I always wanted to live like a hawk" - but the true hawk in the film is the Othello-like Odin, not Hartnett's Hugo. Nelson cuts to a shot of the hawk perched upon a campus fence before a sports contest, then to rising music, a shot of the gymnasium home crowd cheering for their basketball team. Trailing by one point with only time remaining for a single shot, the coach of the team gathers his players and calls for Odin to make the final play, and "if not Odin, then Michael," further relegating Hartnett's Hugo to third choice, and his role within the play is only as a decoy. Nelson provides an overhead angle of the basketball court, focused on the Hawk team logo at mid-court, then cuts to the inbounds play and Odin making a layup at the buzzer to win the game. The fans storm the court, cheering wildly, and Nelson subdues the frenzy to slow motion as he returns to an overhead shot of Odin being hoisted as a hero within the arms of his teammates and fans, while Hartnett narrates, "to soar above everything and everyone, now that's living."
Hartnett portrays Hugo quite well, a tall, dark-haired young man with a seething interior, showing little jealousy or racism toward others - although he is wise and wicked enough to tap into Odin's deepest fears - his downfall his own vaulting ambition. The son of the coach and now a senior being evaluated by college coaching staffs, Hartnett's Hugo has done the athletic dirty work on the basketball court, fighting for rebounds, playing physical defense, and serving in a utility role: as he tells a supposed friend, "you name the position, I fucking play it." Hugo also reveals an apparent need to please his difficult-to-impress father. Seated in the back of the locker room during an angry rant from the Coach regarding the quality of their play, he cringes as the Coach hurls a chalkboard eraser at him: "you've got to be better than all right, son!" Hugo later pawns his wristwatch for a pistol, and Nelson shows Hugo driving his convertible sports car into a particularly bad neighborhood. Hartnett's Hugo visits a drug dealer and purchases steroids - "dreams in a bottle" - and although he has a fifty-fifty chance of becoming "twisted up" on the drugs, he nonetheless endures another painful injection into his stomach lining, trying to enhance his performance by improving his vertical leap.
Mekhi Pfeiffer's Odin, the only African-American student at Palmetto Grove, seems to thrive on his celebrity and notoriety. At a noisy pep rally, Coach Duke tells the student body about his admiration of Odin - "I love him like my own son" - and when the two embrace at the podium, Nelson cuts to a shot of Hugo, sitting in the grandstands with the rest of the students, watching and listening, but revealing no emotion. Pfeiffer's Odin then addresses the crowd himself, giving thanks to his "go-to guy" Michael Cassio, whom he calls "Big Mike," and Mikey joins Odin and the Coach for an embrace before the crowd. Nelson cuts from the embrace to a fraternity party on campus, the thump of hip-hop music central, as are lyrics - "when they let me in the club" - and Odin dances with his pretty blonde girlfriend. The music-and-lyric theme continues throughout the film, with "I'm dark like the side of the moon you don't see" reverberating during shots of a basketball game. The home gymnasium is blacked out for pre-game player introductions, searchlights probing the standing students, and the crowd goes wild for Odin, some girls waving balloon O rings, and Pfeiffer's Odin dominates the game, trash-talking his opponents and hanging from the rim in a triumphantly sweaty yell as he jams home a lay-up miss by Mikey. Nelson's camera smoothly shifts from an overhead shot to floor-level athletic action, and the sense of competition is quick and immediate. When Odin falls and hits the back of his head on the court, he is rushed to an emergency room, and the friends and teammates gather in the waiting area for a series of provocative insights. Hugo's girlfriend Em embraces Mikey, her hands on his side, and Hugo notices, murmuring, "Mikey gets more kisses from my girl than I do" not with jealousy or anger, but with detached, almost sociopathic observation, as if he is registering information for later schemes. When Odin embraces his girlfriend, the two coo to each other in loving whispers, and they are observed by Em with obvious longing and by Hugo with the same sense of detachment.
The Roderigo character from Othello is, in O, Roger Rodriguez, Hugo's overweight and close-to-friendless roommate in the dormitory. Hartnett's Hugo easily manipulates Rog, tapping into his social isolation as the boy endeavors to ingratiate himself with the basketball players. Hugo invites Rog to an exclusive party at which Rog seems sorely out of place, slapping him on the back and goading him - "Roger, don't wuss out on me now" - into picking fights, making anonymous phone calls, and supplying Hugo with cash. Hartnett's Hugo steals the mascot hawk, advises Rog that, "anything worth anything takes time and sacrifice," and after getting Mikey drunk with big swigs from a bottle of tequila, shoves Rog into him to provoke a brawl. After Mikey punches Rog over a table, Hugo pretends to be peacemaker but actually instigates another assault and soon Rog lies bleeding from a superficial knife wound. Later, Hartnett's Hugo manipulates Mikey, who has been suspended from the team, as they sit in a library, wearing gray school-color sweater vests and discussing reputation - "the only person you have to answer to is yourself" - and he advises Mikey to appeal emotionally to Odin's girlfriend: "girls are suckers for guys who pour their hearts out." Mikey seems an innocent dupe, but with layers of unappealing complexity: he is shown holding Rog's arms while Odin pummels him with punches to the midsection, and later, during a basketball game, he sits in the stands behind Rog, flicking his ears and insulting him despite admonitions from nearby girls.
Othello's Venetian authority figures are replaced in Kaaya's O by Dean Brable, taking the Brabianto role, and by Martin Sheen's Coach Duke Goulding, assuming the part of the influential Duke of Venice. After Hugo has Rog call Dean Brable's home with cryptic remarks about something prized of his being "stolen," the Dean and Coach Duke call Pfeiffer's Odin into the office and confront him with an unnamed witness who says he forced himself on Brable's daughter, Desi. When Desi, the Desdemona role played by Julia Stiles as intellectual and mature beyond her years, is also confronted by Dean Brable, she responds with a cool, "none of your business." Significantly, before Odin exits, Brable whispers to him "she deceived me...what makes you think she won't do the same thing to you?" to strike at the same vulnerability of interpersonal confidence that Hugo does. Sheen's Coach Duke is volatile and violent, kicking the boys out of his office and then swiping everything from his desk with an angry shout, or snapping his clipboard in half during a game against a powerhouse opponent. A quiet scene at the Goulding home shows the iron hand with which the Duke rules his household, as they eat in uncomfortable silence.
Pfeiffer's Odin displays maturity in his relationship with Desi, despite his difficult childhood, his record with the police, and the difference in their skin color. They take their shirts off but cuddle lovingly in lieu of sex, although he feels he must sneak in her window rather than arrive at the front door. He tells her about the scars on his back - "you do have the best stories" - and reveals how he was frightened the first time he tried to talk to her. He endured - "I've got them player skills" - and teases her that she is forbidden to use the word, "nigger." Pfeiffer's Odin intuits the essence of a deep relationship, trusting Stiles' Desi with a gift of his great grandmother's handkerchief, and in a private moment on a windblown balcony during another party, he tells her, "I think I can close my eyes with you," and slips a plastic ring onto her finger. During a basketball game, Pfeiffer's Odin winks at Desi in the grandstands, then dominates the contest with a thunderous block of an opponent's shot, then a series of great passes - no-look and behind the back - and a resounding slam dunk. Pointedly, when he turns to the crowd, he notices Desi embracing Mikey in celebration. Desi's dormitory roommate, Em, displays a similar affection-starved, eager-to-please desperation with Hugo as he shows with his father. Hartnett's Hugo rewards her theft of the handkerchief with sexual attention - "all this time I've been looking for romance and all I had to do was steal something" - and Emily teases him by holding the cloth between her teeth.
Hartnett's Hugo continues to prey upon Pfeiffer's proud Odin like a hawk, twisting around their attributes to plant venomous seeds - "you're not a jealous person, man, I am; it's a weakness" - to undo Desi ("white girls are snaky") within Odin's suspicious mind: "just think about the way she played her father." Nelson's camera shows Hartnett's Hugo at his sinister work in the weight room and in the classroom, and the results are immediate: Odin watches Desi and Mikey together from behind a window, then steps away just as Stiles' Desi turns to look, and he watches them from afar - after a subtle image of Hugo with his hawk - talking together on a park bench. Desi notices his coolness - "did somebody say something to you?" - and later, when they drive together to a cheap motel for their first sexual experience with one another, the tension between them turns ugly. Stiles' Desi surrenders herself emotionally - "I want you to do what you want with me" - but Odin's feelings have been poisoned, and Pfeiffer's superstar rolls atop her in passion, then looks up to see his reflection in a mirror. He kisses Desi, but when he glances back at the mirror, it is the image of Mikey's naked body atop her that he sees. Nelson delivers a quick-cut montage of images of Desi and Mikey together, visualizing the frantic flurry of thoughts within Odin's head, and he becomes brutal and sexually violent, punishing Desi rather than making love to her. She cries out for him to stop, but he does not, and Rog's absurd earlier accusation becomes an ugly reality. After an image of the white pigeons, prey for a hawk, Nelson cuts back to a long shot of the Willows motel, and Odin and Desi emerge separately, silent and cold, to walk back to their car.
Pfeiffer portrays Odin with both subtlety and power, never overplaying the emotional moments but revealing the cracks in his confidence. Hugo sits behind him in English class, the instructor pointedly discussing the seduction of Macbeth into violence, and he repeatedly asks about the missing handkerchief until Odin gets upset and spins to fume at him. Next, when Pfeiffer's Odin first sees Desi after their disastrously awful sexual encounter, he says crude and ugly things to her, and she is stunned because the words are so out of character: "don't ever talk to me like that again." Even Odin's basketball play begins to suffer, and when he passes Mikey on the court during practice, he impulsively grabs him and wrestles him to the ground before they are separated, and he ignores the yells from Coach Duke as he kicks open the gym door and storms out. Before the state finals slam-dunk competition, Pfeiffer's Odin snorts cocaine in a basement then grabs Hugo by the neck and slams him against a boiler, repeating "they don't know who they're fucking with" as his world continues to crumble. Hartnett's Hugo eggs him on - "I would give my left nut to be in your shoes" - and at the slam-dunk contest, Odin emerges to cheers but scowls at Desi and Mikey in the grandstands. After Sheen's Duke boasts to college scouts - "grab your jockstraps, gentlemen, he's about to blow you away" - the crowd begins chanting, "O! O! O!" in time to Odin's basketball dribble. He races toward the basket, and in a slow-motion leap, delivers a flying one-handed dunk that shatters the glass backboard and thrills the crowd. The moment becomes ugly when a ball boy tries to retrieve the basketball from Odin for the next contestant. Odin barks at the boy and knocks him down at center court, and the crowd turns, beginning to boo, so Pfeiffer's Odin flings the basketball through the shattered backboard and holds up the orange hoop like a menacing "O." Pointedly, when the Duke and Dean Brable discuss a possible suspension for Odin, Hartnett's Hugo eavesdrops from a hallway, murmuring, "yeah, Dad, who's your favorite, now?"
Hugo continues to goad Odin, already fractured emotionally, into more drug use - "just making it through, player" - pushing him into snorting more cocaine even though he initially refuses. Hugo then weaves a series of sinister lies, telling Odin that Mikey and Desi refer to him as "the nigger" to touch a racial nerve, and claiming they sometimes lay together naked instead of having sex because they are so in love, inverting Odin's reality with Desi and touching a jealous nerve. Odin, tears on his face, refuses to believe - "Desi wouldn't say anything like that, man" - so Hartnett's Hugo arranges an eavesdropping opportunity, and he makes Odin believe Mikey is speaking of Desi ("give me some credit, she's a slut") when he is really discussing the trampy Brandy: "she said she'd do me until the day she dies." Pfeiffer's Odin emerges afterward fiercely resolved - "how are we going to kill this motherfucker?" - and he now completely trusts Hugo - "you're my man for life, forever" - who responds with a twisted, "to me, you're not my friend, you're my brother, and when a brother is wronged, so am I."
Nelson drives the short film toward a tragic conclusion that seems all too real. With a spinningly hypnotic camera shot up a long spiral staircase, Hartnett's Hugo narrates the plot to murder both Desi and Mikey on the night of a game, the narration becoming whispered conversation at the top of the stairs. Nelson edits quickly, as if within a suspenseful slasher movie, cutting between the game at the gymnasium, Rog lying in wait, Mikey and Hugo driving to the gym, and Odin skulking toward Desi and Em's dormitory room. The images are brief but vividly realized: a radio interviewer with the Duke; Roger checking his watch in a car by the side of the road; Hugo putting on his hazards as he and Mike approach the car; and Odin climbing the metal fire-escape toward Desi's room. Hip-hop music begins to pound - "sweat it up!" - as Nelson cycles from a cheering crowd of students, to Rog emerging with a handgun to confront a confused Mikey (Hugo: "do it, Rog, do it!"), to Odin resting his hand on Desi's shoulder and whispering, "I'm sorry," as he kisses her gently. Hugo's plan unravels when Mikey grabs Rog's handgun and they struggle. Hartnett's Hugo bashes Mikey from behind with a tire iron and after Rog shoots Mikey, he shouts "you herbed us, man!" and kills Rog with a pistol shot to the belly.
Odin and Desi's tragic encounter is much less frantic, filmed by Nelson as a heartbroken moment wrought with tragedy. They lie back on the bed, kissing, and Odin rolls on top of her but seizes her by the throat and squeezes, whispering "shh" and "go to sleep" over and over again until her resistance slows and stops and she lies in wide-eyed death as Odin collapses in front of the bed. When Em returns to the room, she screams out, and Pfeiffer's Odin tells her, "she was a ho'" and how she had given to her lover his great grandmother's handkerchief. Em catches on quickly and when Hugo bursts into the room she accuses him immediately and repeatedly - "you gave that scarf to Michael!" - and when Hugo shoots her too, Odin makes the realization and rises to confront him. Hartnett's Hugo backs out of the room, the gathering and alarmed students suddenly scattering when they see his pistol and the two dead girls, and when one disarms him, Odin picks up the weapon. He begins sobbing, herding everyone out onto the porch, including a defiant Hugo - "I'll say nothing" - as Odin, Hamlet-like, asks them all to tell what really happened: "you tell them the truth...you tell them I loved that girl...I did." Approached by two police officers, one Caucasian, one African-American, Pfeiffer's heartbroken Odin turns the gun on himself - "you tell them where I'm from didn't make me do this" - and shoots himself in the heart, captured in a sudden freeze frame before falling to the floor.
Nelson concludes the operatic final moments not with more hip-hop music but with an Italian aria from Guiseppe Verdi's Otelo, as police and emergency medical technicians arrive in squad cars and ambulances, followed by reporters and neighbors. Images race by, from Hugo in handcuffs in the back of a police car, to sobbing dorm residents, to Rog and Mikey lying dead in the street, to the Duke being told the news at the gym. Hartnett narrates as the ambitious Hugo ends the film - "a hawk is no good around normal birds, they can't fit in" - as he describes the hawk Odin - "they hate him for what they can't be, proud, powerful, determined, dark" - in a chillingly emotionless tone. As news reporters watch the squad car pull away, Hugo peers back - "one of these days, everyone is going to pay attention to me" - and his final words, "because I'm going to fly, too," are followed by an abrupt blackout. Nelson's modernized Othello, realistically updated by Kaaya to a contemporary prep academy, is a consistently compelling and well-acted vision of the tragedy with disturbingly real connections to today's rampant school violence.