One of the Coen Brothers best. A delight for fans of old Hollywood and classic films
I am a long time fan of the Coen Brothers films, going back to "Blood Simple" when I talked up and promoted the film to my friends who, back then, asked "Coens who, what?". I enjoy even second and third tier Coen Brothers films. Despite tepid to outright hostile reviews of "Hail Caesar" I found it to be one of Joel and Ethan Coen's very best films. However, I used to live in Hollywood, used to be in the film business and, like the Coens, I have a fondness for the history, lore and myth of old pre-TV Hollywood and the Hollywood studio system. Your enjoyment of "Hail Caesar" will likely depend on if you can answer "yes" to knowing who and what the following people, events and subjects are (it's hard to appreciate an irony or joke about, caricature of, loving recreation of or quote about someone or something if you don't know what it's about): Joe McCarthy The House On Un American Activities Committee The Hollywood Blacklist Hedda Hopper Luella Parsons The Carmen Sternwood "Chinese dress" scene from "The Big Sleep" Irving Thalberg Gene Autry Esther Williams Gene Kelly Carmen Miranda Eddie Mannix Hollywood Biblical Epics since the silent era Carlotta Valdes If you can say "yes" to most of the above then you will likely find the film to be delightful. If not then the actual situations, and what the story can tell you about the people, and why they are doing and saying what what are doing and saying, may leave you blank and trying to figure out why the film seems flat. It isn't. It's brilliant. But you do have to know what you're looking at. For some people "Hail Caesar" may be as interesting as "Straight Outta Compton" is to a Trump supporter. For those who know Hollywood it's a charming, lovingly made reenactment of an era, its style, personalities, film cliches, story genres and production modes as seen through the imagination of Joel and Ethan Coen. I suspect that one reason that the film may have not caught fire with some people is that it lampoons the Marxist/Communist members of the 1950s era film community who were the targets of the McCarthy era anti-Communist HUAC hearings and the Hollywood blacklist. These people have since the 1950s become the founding saints and martyrs of modern liberal Hollywood. Hollywood has, as an institution, been out for cultural and political revenge on conservative America ever since the HUAC era. Unlike the recent film "Trumbo", where blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo is portrayed as a flawed but heroic genius screenwriter in tune with modern progressivism, the Communist screenwriters in "Hail Caesar" are portrayed as verbose faux intellectual nincompoops. If Trumbo had appeared in "Hail Caesar" he would have been one of the fools in the row boat, rowing out from a luxurious Malibu beach house to rendezvous with a Russian submarine. The fools in the row boat are of course the subversive writer's group "The Future" that kidnapped George Clooney's character. Not a proper way, some might feel, to treat saints and martyrs. In the film the fools elect to stay behind in Hollywood to carry on the struggle of inserting subversive commie propaganda into seemingly innocuous entertainment. In real life they were more successful than they could ever have dreamed of. So the joke may be on us. The Coen's view on the era is both satirical and subtly at odds with progressive dogma about what is always virtuous now, always wrong in the past and Hollywood's mythologizing of the post world war two oppression of its Marxist and Communist film makers. "Hail Caesar" was obviously a labor of love for the Coens. It deserved much better than it received on release. But it's not surprising many people just didn't get it. Still, I would rank it in the top ten of all time Joel and Ethan Coen films. RECOMMENDED. Read more
