I am grateful for the Coen brothers. Watching their most recent film I couldn’t help but think of Woody Allen. That director’s angst over comedy vs. tragedy, and his nihilistic tendencies, make attending one of his movies a risk. It could be great, but more often you hope that it is at least a good piece of entertainment.
With the Coen brothers, you can go into every film knowing you’ll get “a good piece of entertainment” and usually much more. So, though Hail, Caesar! is no Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? or Raising Arizona, it is still the best 2 hours of entertainment you’ll get on a winter afternoon or evening in the theater these days.
Go see it if only for the delight of seeing Alden Ehrenreich as Hobie Doyle the cowboy wield a lasso and then, later, a lasso of spaghetti, and for two great discourses, one by Hebert Marcuse on the evils of capitalism; and one by a rabbi, an Orthodox priest, a Roman Catholic priest, and a “protestant clergyman” on the nature of Jesus Christ and/or the godhead and how such godhead should be represented on film so as not to offend.
Mostly the film is an homage to the sprawling work of MGM studio at the end of its run, the 1950s, when the machine was going at full tilt cranking out films of every genre. There’s no need for Scarlett Johansson in this film, IMO, except to see a mermaid and some stunning water ballet and think– “yeah, kooky, you don’t see that anymore!” There are places where the film actually doesn’t have the well-oiled feeling of a usual Coen film (that spaghetti lasso, for example, and some of the extras and shots that go on too long), but that, too, feels like part of the homage. Back before special effects people did the best they could, and gee it was fun. Channing Tatum can sing and tap dance! That it was on the big screen was exciting enough.
I’m sure there are more allusions to films of that period than anyone could catch. I was shocked to see an allusion to an obscure Hitchcock film, Shadow of a Doubt, which I have watched more times than a person should. Watching the dailies of a drawing room drama directed by Ralph Fiennes’ character Laurence Laurentz, studio director Eddie Mannix is shown an opening sequence of waltzing and the music is “The Merry Widow Waltz.” This is a direct imitation of a motif in Shadow of a Doubt, a film written by Thornton Wilder in which Theresa Wright discovers her Uncle Charlie, played by Joseph Cotten, is the merry widow killer. I mean, if that is written into the movie, I am sure I missed a LOT. (Also, Carlotta Valdez, Hobie’s date [channeling Carmen Miranda], is the name of a character in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.)
The plot is thin, but what do you want from an extravagant multi-genre spectacle film in the old style? The performances of the various leads are all wonderful, and Josh Brolin is completely up to the challenge of orchestrating this wild ride. His major personal conflict is to decide whether to accept an offer to run Lockheed Martin at a much higher salary and without nearly as many crises to manage, or remain as studio head. His epiphany is that movies are just so great! Or something less deep than that. He loves his job! And we get a sense the Coen brothers do, too.
In the end, Hail, Caesar! does seem close to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and not just for the presence of George Clooney and the titles heavy on punctuation. The title of Oh Brother comes from the film Sullivan’s Travels about a director who wants to make a serious, issues picture, and heads off to learn more about the plight of the common man so he can tell his story. After witnessing the suffering of others and sharing in some of it himself, he realizes there is a place in the world for screwball comedy. It brings light and laughter into dark corners of the world.
And indeed, the world is quite a bit brighter thanks to the films of the Joel and Ethan Coen.
fantastic review!