05 February 2016

Hooray for Hollywood!

Hail, Caesar!

Crit
Good god, what grand, goofy fun. I come to bury no one, but to praise many:

It's an actor's movie, and I haven't even mentioned Josh Brolin, as a studio head so sincerely Catholic that he goes to confession after lying to his wife about sneaking cigarettes. Or George Clooney in a semi-sleazy role he could sleepwalk through but doesn't.

But the most remarkable thing is how sweet this picture is. It's ostensibly a satire, but can it be satire when all the characters are likable, and even the milieu, so ugly in Barton Fink, seems like a pretty neat place to make a living? I'm not being ironic (or disapproving) when I call this the feel-good picture of . . . well, the year has just started, but this sets a high bar.

Trailers

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Ok, I admit it. I was wrong.

The first time I saw this movie, I thought it was too broad, too half-baked, too cynical, too acerbic. The second time I saw it, I knew it would be a serious contender for my best movies of the year list, only 11 months away, and that it may be one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies ever.

First, what I liked so much about it. Then, why the change of heart.

Like many Coen Brothers movies, Hail, Caesar! finds its humor and its drama in its protagonist's existential crisis. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a 1940s Hollywood studio exec who is a devout Catholic and a proud American, struggles to find justify living a life dedicated to the movies. He loves movies, big screen spectacles that inform, inspire, and entertain, but he's also struggling with the idea that this industry has no future, and the present that it does have is irrelevant and childish.

Over the course of the movie, Mannix wrestles with an odd holy trinity that the movies seem to occupy: business, ideology, and entertainment. Are they just a capitalist tool for profit and exploitation of labor? Are they a vehicle for conveying coded messages and visions for how the world should run? Are they mere distractions that should be forgotten the minute you leave the theater?

As Mannix moves from studio set to studio set, we the audience realize that the magic of movies lies in the fact that they are somehow a combination of all three. The magic of movies is that they draw from so many different sources, talented craftspeople and talentless hacks and big ideas and little compromises and bulky technology made to glide fluidly across a stage etc.. etc... Most of the time, the product is crap. But some of the time, the whole is so much bigger than the sum of its component parts. And that transition from the parts to the whole is just beautiful, and, when in the hands of the Coen Brothers, hilarious and sharp and full of self-criticism and self-love.

Plus, Alden Ehrenreich is the best.

And quickly, why the change of heart? Coen Brothers movies demand repeat viewings. This is true for The Big Lebowski. This is true for Inside Llewyn Davis. Probably true for every one of there movies. They are packed with details that play off of bits recently past and soon to come. The first time through, I found myself laughing at some of the surface level jokes but generally disappointed at the movie I expected to see but didn't get. The second time through, I knew what I was getting, saw so many different ways that the Coen Brothers imbued each character and scene and setting and joke with a warmth and substance that not only worked in and of itself, but contributed to a larger whole.

Alright, I'll stop rambling now. But this movie is the best. And Dan, I owe it to you for encouraging me to give it another shot. Expect to hear about this one some more at the end of the year.