Lights, Camera, Economics

Hail, Caesar!

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Three and One Half Stars

By Rollan Schott
August 13, 2016

The time may come when "Hail Caesar" is poured over by disciples in the cult of the brothers Coen in much the same way that "Barton Fink" has been since its release a quarter century ago. Here is another film about the inner workings of the Hollywood system, where the movie studio becomes an arena for competing ideals about religion, money, and human worth, where its dark contradictions threaten to lurch out of the shadows and devour everything that keeps the tenuous and cynical process afloat.




The joke, of course, is that the symbolism of "Hail Caesar" is comically obvious while its meaning remains cryptic. Theologians of each major religion are assembled in a boardroom to discuss the depiction of Jesus in an upcoming blockbuster. A clutch of preening intellectuals in a secluded beachfront estate explain the urgent importance of communism to an enormously successful and dense movie star. Hollywood adjusts and repurposes the identities of its celebrities while the communists target it as an example of how capitalism fails the individual. Poop jokes these are not.

At the heart of "Hail Caesar" is a remote Hollywood fixer named Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Even after navigating a storm of intrusions into his heavily curated world, we learn almost nothing about him. He goes to confession every day to lament that he struggles to quit smoking. He is pressured by executives to leave the turbulent world of Hollywood for a stable, chushier gig with a major airline company. We know that he is married, but when his wife finally turns up late in the film it comes as a small shock. He is so consumed by his work that we forget he has something resembling a life.

The disaster in Mannix' lap arrives as a ransom letter. His studio's biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, always keen to play the Coens' fool), is kidnapped in broad daylight from the set of a big budget prestige picture about Jesus' crucifixion. A group identifying itself as 'The Future' wants $100,000 in exchange for his return. Mannix must not only come up with the money, discreetly, but also keep the press off the scent of his star performer's disappearance, even as twin reporters ambush him in pursuit of bogus gossip about Whitlock himself.

The Coens spring back and forth between Mannix and scenes with The Future, a group of stuffy, vain intellectuals holed up in a secluded beach front estate discussing economics over tea and through a haze of pipe tobacco (history buffs might recognize a few names). They are uncommonly hospitable to their hostage, who joins them in the study for a long conversation that makes him an ignorant communist convert.

This is the Red Scare according to the Coen brothers - a covert infiltration by radical leftists to manipulate the capitalist masses by means of a semantic script change in a passing studio picture. In a way, "Hail, Caesar!" suggests that the threat of America lapsing toward communism was brought about not by cunning and treachery, but by mutual stupidity. The intellectuals wrote a bum script, and the workers forgot the line.

The comical ironies in these dialogs are the heart of the film's whimsically intellectual humor, the root of its charm, and the labyrinth that Coen scholars will dive into when the position "Hail, Caesar!" occupies in the Coen canon solidifies. These are among the most nuanced and sophisticated commercial filmmakers in Hollywood's long history, and the modesty of this film is a false one. This is very smart humor, and very amusing intelligence. As silly as it seems, "Hail, Caesar!" is something grand.

The Coens also make time in the proceedings for a handful of film set insights that take the form of terrific genre parodies. A wholesome young cowboy with fair hair orchestrates a ridiculously acrobatic rescue. A group of wonderbread sailors break into a suspiciously homoerotic musical number about their longing for women while out at sea. In a Busby Berkeley style musical, a chorus of synchronized swimming showgirls blossom around a mermaid Scarlett Johansson.

There are others. Although it is riddled with satire of classic Hollywood genre pictures, "Hail, Caesar!" itself is not a conventional tale. It works more as a collection of viniettes about moviemaking, religion, and yes, economics. A sinister but subdued kidnapping plot draws all of these elements together in its undercurrent, but that can't save the film from feeling somewhat unresolved. If it is frustrating, though, it is still very funny. "Hail, Caesar!" is a clever and unusual film, and the fog of genious hangs heavy over its head.