Hail Caesar (15.)
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Eirenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. 106 mins.
Coen Bros – audience. Audience – Coen Bros. It's never an easy relationship. Their films are always easy to admire but only erratically find favour with the wider audience; probably because they are awkward, contrary buggers. So it is entirely natural that one of their most commercial sounding projects – a light, sunny, star-studded comedy set in 50's Hollywood – should turn out to be one of their least engaging, most audience repellent films.
Probably your first thought when you hear about Hail Caesar and Clooney playing a movie star who is abducted from the set of a biblical epic where he is playing a Roman centurion, was How Can It Fail. After a moment's reflection, your second thought might well have been a very clear outline for how it could fail: the cosy self congratulation of George Clooney working with the Coens, again; the Coens doing outright comedy in general. Clooney/ Coen/ Comedy – they don't bring out the best in each other.
Even so you'd expect better than this. Hail Caesar is oddly weightless. The plot centres on a day in the life of studio chief Brolin who spends his time trying to fix all the problems that come up and keeping his stars out of trouble while weighing up an offer to go and work for Lockheed and give up all this frivolity. This being a Coen Bros film there are deeper, inscrutable themes playing themselves out underneath, but the surface is a very loose, rather indulgent celebration of Hollywood, little more than a series of skits and movie parodies. The movie parodies – of musicals, biblical epics, singing cowboy films or Esther Williams aqua musicals – are perhaps the most pointless part of a film that isn't short of pointless parts. They are neither funny nor particularly accurate. In fact very little in this film really suggest 50s Hollywood. For example, Clooney's acting in his role just doesn't seem to be in the style of a 50s movie star.
I'm not saying there aren't treasures in it. Brolin's meeting with various religious leaders is very funny – “The Bible is a swell book;” as is Fiennes as a British director trying to coax a performance from a young cowboy actor in his sophisticated drawing room drama. (Fiennes is always funny these days. Who died and made him Mr Big Screen Hilarity?) There are some great lines such as the piece of direction, when Clooney's character meet Jesus: “squint against the grandeur.” But most of the film just passes pleasantly but aimlessly by. In the second half I addressed myself to trying to work out what it was really all about and thought perhaps it is in someway addressing the role movies play in delivering and enforcing ideology, and the battle to have control over that, with the Communist writers trying to sneak their message into the mainstream epics. (Hail Caesar the film within a film is clearly based on Ben Hur, which writer Gore Vidal laced with a gay subtext.) This film has a markedly different portrayal of communist infiltration in Hollywood than Trumbo – here they really are all stooges of Moscow. It may also be a send up of the gullibility of actors; Clooney gets converted to the communist cause with ease and then just as quickly snaps out of it. One thing I did notice was that yet again, and for a second film in a row, they have their lead character being tempted by a deal with the devil.
The Coens have no business having fun, their terrain is the dark. But I suppose these frivolities have their purpose. They are like serial killers who strike once ever decade when they become overwhelmed with their dark imagines – Blood Simple, Fargo, No Country For Old Men. There are dark moments in between these but a lot of the films seem like time fillers, keeping their skill sets in working order as they wait for dark longings to build. And by my reckoning, they are about due.
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Eirenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. 106 mins.
Coen Bros – audience. Audience – Coen Bros. It's never an easy relationship. Their films are always easy to admire but only erratically find favour with the wider audience; probably because they are awkward, contrary buggers. So it is entirely natural that one of their most commercial sounding projects – a light, sunny, star-studded comedy set in 50's Hollywood – should turn out to be one of their least engaging, most audience repellent films.
Probably your first thought when you hear about Hail Caesar and Clooney playing a movie star who is abducted from the set of a biblical epic where he is playing a Roman centurion, was How Can It Fail. After a moment's reflection, your second thought might well have been a very clear outline for how it could fail: the cosy self congratulation of George Clooney working with the Coens, again; the Coens doing outright comedy in general. Clooney/ Coen/ Comedy – they don't bring out the best in each other.
Even so you'd expect better than this. Hail Caesar is oddly weightless. The plot centres on a day in the life of studio chief Brolin who spends his time trying to fix all the problems that come up and keeping his stars out of trouble while weighing up an offer to go and work for Lockheed and give up all this frivolity. This being a Coen Bros film there are deeper, inscrutable themes playing themselves out underneath, but the surface is a very loose, rather indulgent celebration of Hollywood, little more than a series of skits and movie parodies. The movie parodies – of musicals, biblical epics, singing cowboy films or Esther Williams aqua musicals – are perhaps the most pointless part of a film that isn't short of pointless parts. They are neither funny nor particularly accurate. In fact very little in this film really suggest 50s Hollywood. For example, Clooney's acting in his role just doesn't seem to be in the style of a 50s movie star.
I'm not saying there aren't treasures in it. Brolin's meeting with various religious leaders is very funny – “The Bible is a swell book;” as is Fiennes as a British director trying to coax a performance from a young cowboy actor in his sophisticated drawing room drama. (Fiennes is always funny these days. Who died and made him Mr Big Screen Hilarity?) There are some great lines such as the piece of direction, when Clooney's character meet Jesus: “squint against the grandeur.” But most of the film just passes pleasantly but aimlessly by. In the second half I addressed myself to trying to work out what it was really all about and thought perhaps it is in someway addressing the role movies play in delivering and enforcing ideology, and the battle to have control over that, with the Communist writers trying to sneak their message into the mainstream epics. (Hail Caesar the film within a film is clearly based on Ben Hur, which writer Gore Vidal laced with a gay subtext.) This film has a markedly different portrayal of communist infiltration in Hollywood than Trumbo – here they really are all stooges of Moscow. It may also be a send up of the gullibility of actors; Clooney gets converted to the communist cause with ease and then just as quickly snaps out of it. One thing I did notice was that yet again, and for a second film in a row, they have their lead character being tempted by a deal with the devil.
The Coens have no business having fun, their terrain is the dark. But I suppose these frivolities have their purpose. They are like serial killers who strike once ever decade when they become overwhelmed with their dark imagines – Blood Simple, Fargo, No Country For Old Men. There are dark moments in between these but a lot of the films seem like time fillers, keeping their skill sets in working order as they wait for dark longings to build. And by my reckoning, they are about due.
