Hail,
Caesar! (2016): Written and directed by Joel and Ethan
Coen. Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph
Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Channing
Tatum. Running Time: 116 minutes.
Rating:
3.5/4
It’s
been a few years since the Coen Brothers last graced the big screen with their
directorial presence, but at long last they’re back, and in typical fashion;
their new film, a broad comedic riff on Golden-Era Hollywood called Hail, Caesar! is a complete tonal and
thematic 180 from their last work, the subtle, masterfully heartbreaking Inside Llewyn Davis. It’s also (and this too is typical for them)
much more multi-layered, oddball, and complicated than what you might think you’re
getting based on the trailers, or at least appears to be upon first
viewing. The question of whether or not
the movie does in fact contain a deeper, more nuanced examination of classic
Hollywood than some think is a question I can’t answer until I’ve seen it at
least once more and mulled it over at least twice more, but it is still superbly
well-acted, broadly funny, and packed with enough stylistic Easter eggs for
fans of classic cinema to pick out that I can wholeheartedly recommend it, and
consider it one of the best and most interesting February (USA)/March (Germany)
releases we’ve had in years.
Our
main character is Eddie Mannix, played to a T by the always-dependable Josh
Brolin, Head of Physical Production at Capital Pictures. And when I say “physical,” I mean it- he’s
basically the studio bulldog, roaming around Hollywood at literally all hours
of the night and day and directly intervening in each and every crisis that
comes along concerning the studio’s big stars (remember, these were the days
when there was some meaning to actors at least pretending to live as paragons
of moral Christian virtue). In our
opening scene, he breaks up a naughty, 3 a.m. photoshoot involving one of the
up-and-coming lady actresses, slaps her around until she agrees to go quietly, the
police shrug it all off, and we are officially off to the glittering, gilded
races.
This
particular several-days-in-the-life-of-Mannix features four main plotlines, all
running parallel to each other. The one getting
biggest billing in the film’s marketing involves George Clooney’s Baird
Whitlock, one of the longtime studio heavyweights and set to star in a Ben Hur-esque prestige picture called,
what else, Hail, Caesar! After a round of filming, he is drugged
and kidnapped by two of the extras (one of whom, to my delight, is played by
Vork from The Guild) and whisked off
to a beach house in Malibu by a strange group of older men calling themselves “The
Future.” That, however, is just one part
of a whole. We also have side plots featuring
Scarlett Johansson as a divorced starlet whose soon-to-show pregnancy threatens
the family-oriented studio with a potential image crisis, frustrated top-down
efforts to change the public image of Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich),
traditionally a Western mainstay, by inserting him into a classic British stage
drama and setting him up with another of the studio’s big-name actresses, and
the behind-the-scenes antics of dancing superstar Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum),
who is a lot more than the simple performer he first appears to be.
This
might sound like a lot to pack into a sub-two hour movie, and it is, but all
that debatably ends up being little more than window dressing. The largest bulk of the film’s running time
consist of extended homages to the various genre big-scale genre productions and
musical tropes that Golden Era Hollywood made famous, from shoot-em-up,
stunt-heavy Westerns, to stuffily costumed ballroom dramas, to crass overt
religious prestige flicks, to painstakingly choreographed (and wholly tangential)
tap-dance numbers in bar rooms, and much, much more. For all their claims to abhor researching for
their films, the dedication to recreating so much of the old school studio
system in look and feel is, all on its own, worth the price of admission for
any classics fan. I imagine one could
make an extensive board game out of identifying all the films and figures
referenced here (Mannix himself is based on actual historical person of the
same name).
That
said, despite the technical and physical grandeur on display and the broad
bawdiness of a lot of the humor, there are a world of tiny details stuck into
the sides of the frame that let us deduce a slew of information about Mannix
and the universe he inhabits. Casual
asides reveal a widespread assumption that the then-recent spread of TV will
kill the film industry before too long, and there is a wealth of commentary on
the history of gender roles in film production to be found in a side scene
featuring Francis McDormand as a chain-smoking woman apparently responsible for
all of each day’s grunt editing work, which she does sequestered away in a dark
closet of a room (the scene also functions as the brilliant payoff to a joke
set up over half an hour beforehand). The
Red Scare is ever-present, and even plays a key part in the film’s
conclusion.
These
sequences are so long and detailed that it almost seems like the “story” of the
film is something of a joke, an excuse to move from one tribute film set to
another, not unlike how many classic movie musicals were deliberately designed
to allow for as many non-sequitur song-and-dance numbers as possible. Unfortunately, this makes it rather difficult
to parse out any connecting threads between the tissues of the film, and can
easily lead one to think that the film is ultimately more than a diverting a
fun ride meant to poke fun at collective studio nostalgia, albeit in a very
superficial sense.
I
think there’s more to the film than that.
What, I can’t quite say yet, since I will need to wait for the DVD
release in order to see it again, but there were enough symbolic undertones I
took away from the experience to wholly dismiss it. The real-life Mannix was kind of an awful
person (and may have actually killed a man), not at all the conscientious Catholic
Brolin plays, but even Brolin’s portrayal seems to be a bit of a show he puts
up for the world (all the world is a stage, after all). The scenes where he breaks his cool and hits
actors who step out of line (and the terror they are immediately seized with)
hints at something darker in his character he might be desperate to hide (and
he isn’t the only cast member with a desperately dark secret to hide). I found a scene with his wife (a cameo role
by Alison Pill) to be very telling- her bearing and words scream “I FEEL
NEGLECTED AND IGNORED,” but being as caught up in the glittering endlessness of
showbiz as he is, Mannix seems completely oblivious, or maybe just doesn’t
care.
Or
perhaps I imagined all that and Hail,
Caesar! really is just a popcorn flick the Coens tossed out while gearing
up for their next really great project.
Even if it ultimately is that though, it’s still a fun enough romp that
I loved watching the movie, and found it well worth a watch for anyone missing
the olden days of song-and-dance cinema.
-Noah Franc
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