While open to interpretation, the supposed first “golden age of TV” was the 1950s, when its rise first took a bit out of the movie theater box office and threatened the studio system. That era, or just before it, is the setting for the Coen Brothers new movies, Hail, Caesar! Now, a new golden age of TV is upon us, the influence is clearly being felt in contemporary movies, and Hail, Caesar!, a clever and entertaining but ultimately light and somewhat insignificant parody about a single day at a movie studio, feels more like an introduction to a potentially great TV series—almost like a parody series in the spirit of Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men more than it is a stand-alone film.
Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannic, the head of Capital Pictures (a real person), juggling multiple emergencies while deciding whether to stay at Capital Pictures (a business about to go through major change) or work for a car company (which is on the verge of the highway explosion). His most pressing matter is the prestige film Hail, Caesar!, a bit of a riff on the awards prestige films that get so much attention now from studios at the end of the year. The film-within-a-film is a sword and sandal picture starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, who’s pretty funny at playing a bad actor), who happens to get kidnapped. On other sound stages, there’s the singing mermaid (Scarlett Johansson) who’s pregnant out-of-wedlock, a musical starring Channing Tatum’s dancing Burt, and a melodrama directed by the great Laurence Lorenz (the hilarious Ralph Fiennes, clearly still in Grand Budapest Hotel mindset) and starring a lower than low-key western star Tobey (Alden Ehrenreich), who’s getting a new image. And then there are the twin gossip columnists (Tilda Swinton) looking for scandal.
The movie is pretty packed with stars and familiar character actors, and the Coens are great at finding ways to showcase both kinds of performers in ways they’re rarely seen in other movies. They even have a breakout star thanks to Ehrenreich’s performance, who surprised just about everyone at the screening I attended with his deadpan performance (especially opposite Veronica Osorio), and Hail, Caesar! is certainly one of the funniest and silliest movies to have come from the Coens, probably since The Big Lebowski. I have great respect for a movie not trying to be a dramedy but instead aiming at pure comedy and also being well executed. Any message or deeper insights (mostly about communism and religion) fly under the radar, as the movie goes from one parody of old Hollywood film to another, but if you aren’t a fan of TCM, this movie might not be your cup of tea. Sometimes the parody is so close to the real thing that the joke is easy to miss.
But as I said, the movie feels very incomplete, like a pilot turned into a movie (think Mulholland Drive). It introduces the characters, establishes bigger issues and future tensions, and proposes a structure, but it doesn’t have much narrative direction moving it towards a satisfying ending. The only thing we’re really left with is a bit of that smug importance about being the men who make the movies, which can be pretty alienating in movies about movies. While the production value is great, they could have gone further (the digital quality of the “movie scenes” hurt the attempts to make them look of-the-time), but as a piece of pure entertainment, the movie is extremely successful. It knows what it’s parodying, does it with precision and intelligence, and manages to also succeed at perhaps the hardest kind of comedy: farce. It moves at an impressive speed that lets the unrealistic goofiness of the premises and performances be enjoyed without slowing down enough that you think about logic. If you buy into the movie within the first 10 minutes, you will probably enjoy the ride. If not, this might not be for you (and this movie won’t be for everyone).
But as someone who took the ride and LOVES and appreciates old Hollywood, this movie was a pretty delightful watch. They aren’t just referencing the things they’re parodying; the Coens have legitimately funny jokes in this movie, and they’re clearly having a great time making this after some of their more serious fare (Bridge of Spies and Unbroken’s scripts, Inside Llewyn Davis), but like Inside Llewyn Davis, I get the sense they’re approaching their new stage as auteur directors with an appreciation for their specific but loyal audiences. If Llewyn Davis was about an artist learning to appreciate and collaborate with his audience, this reminds us that before the Coens were movie makers, they were movie watchers.
(Universal Pictures)
Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.
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