Hail, Ceaser! (2015)

If you know much of anything about the Coen brothers then you probably know that they are big fans of the films of classic Hollywood. Their filmography bears this out, they've made film noirs (Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Big Lebowski), screwball comedies (Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, The Big Lebowski), a gangster picture (Millers Crossing), a movie about a screen writer (Barton Fink), a Frank Capra movie (The Hudsucker Proxy) and their musical (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) even took its name from the movie-in-the-movie at the center of Preston Sturges 1941 Hollywood satire Sullivan's Travels. So when the Coen's decided to make a movie (or another movie if you count Barton Fink) set largely inside a Hollywood studio of the golden era, it was a natural fit.

Hail, Caesar! will likely never be ranked near the top of the brothers canon, but its a deceptively good film and one of the best love letters to classic studio system Hollywood ever attempted. Set in 1951 Hollywood, at a time when television's ultimately successful threat to the studio system was just beginning to be discerned in the industry, the plot concerns Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, perpetually cast as a buffoon in one of the brothers longest running in-jokes) who is kidnapped late in the production of a movie titled Hail, Ceaser: A Tale of the Christ (one of those sword and sandal religious films that were so popular in the 1950's like Samson and Delilah, The Robe and Ben-Hur) by a group of what turn out to be largely inept communists. While Whitlock's kidnapping is the event the propels forward much of the movie's plot, Whitlock is not the main character, rather the main character is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) head of production and resident "fixer" at the fictional Capitol Pictures, which by the way was also the name of the studio in Barton Fink so this movie could be seen as being part of the same 'universe' as the earlier film, only set five or so years later.

Eddie Mannix, whose name is obviously a reference to a real person named Eddie Mannix who did essentially the same job as Brolin's character for MGM for decades, is one of the most interestingly complex of the Coen Brothers characters. A devout Catholic Mannix loves his job, in part because of the people, in part because he works in what is essentially a factory for making fantasy's seem real, and in part because its so challenging. In the more outwardly moralistic time in which this movie and classic Hollywood took place a "fixers" job was managing the public images of stars and keeping potential scandals from becoming too public. In this role Mannix is tasked with both getting Whitlock back from his captors and preventing the story from becoming public, which involves fending off the insistent questioning of twin gossip columnists both played by Tilda Swinton.

But getting the captured star back from his abductors is only a part of Mannix's job, in the course of the little more then a day in which the movie plays out Mannix must check the reaction of various faith communities to the studios coming Christ epic, stop a starlet from posing for lewd photos, handle a casting crises on a drawing room drama just starting production, and find a husband for a star pregnant out of wedlock (Scarlett Johansson doing a wonderfully out of place seeming Brooklyn accent as an Esther Williams type musical star). These morally questionable activates inflame Mannix's Catholic guilt and cause him to entertain a job offer he doesn't want from the Lockheed Corporation, as well as bug his priest with daily confessions, though unable to face what's apparently  really gnawing at him he confesses always to minor infractions like sneaking cigarettes while his wife is trying to get him to quite and to "slapping a star in anger".

I liked this plot and I liked this central character but lets be clear that this is not a somber film,  though I often find myself latching on to the darker aspects of Coen brothers films while its the comedy that seems to resonate with most people. The plot in Hail, Ceaser! seems in many ways secondary to what I assume was the brothers primary interest in making this film, getting to play around in old studio system Hollywood. The musical numbers, the veiled references, the character actors with memorable faces, the chance to stretch around the imaginary back lot and soak in the comically heightened essence of a different time, everyone here seems to be having a ball. Among the big stars in smallish roles here are of course the aforementioned Johansson and Swinton, as well as Channing Tatum as a Gene Kelly like dancing star, Ralph Fiennes as a pretentious director, and Joel Coen's wife and muse Frances McDormand is a film editor who looks like Edith Head. But its relative unknown Alden Ehrereich who often steals the movie as genuinely humble singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle, he is so perfect in this part that its almost impossible to imagine there ever being a better role for him, I need to see this guy in another movie just so I can know for certain that he's an actor and not really Hobie Doyle.

Hail, Ceaser! is a movie that's simply going to be most appreciated by classic film buffs of which I consider myself one. While it has a few genuinely interesting things to say and observations to impart its profound in a very subtle way that doesn't take from its more outwardly amusing nature, I didn't really laugh much in this movie but I did often wear something of a knowing smile. Despite some big names in the cast Hail, Ceaser! didn't feel so much like one of the Coen's bigger scale crowd pleasers (like the excellent True Grit), but more like one of the smaller movies they seem to make largely to entertain themselves (like A Serious Man), and if you get that I think that you'll enjoy Hail, Ceaser! ***1/2