Movie Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’ pays homage to old Hollywood

Featuring long-time collaborators Josh Brolin, George Clooney and Frances McDormand, the Coen brothers’ latest offering defies audience expectations at very turn

By Godwin Ng

PHOTO: INTERNET

The opening shot can tell us a lot about a film. It’s the director’s opening gambit; setting the tone for subsequent scenes and distilling the film’s essence into a single frame.

That the comedy Hail, Caesar! begins with a farcical shot of a bloodied Jesus accompanied with melodramatic music tells us all we need to know about it: this is a film that surprises at every turn.

The latest offering by filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (Burn After Reading, 2008) is a goofy tale of the shenanigans that go on beneath the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, told through a day in the shoes of studio producer and fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin).

His job is straightforward — keep the scandalous private lives of the stars out of the public eye and ensure that the studio’s big-budget productions run like a well-oiled machine.

So when the studio’s biggest star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) mysteriously vanishes during a major shoot, Mannix scrambles to locate his whereabouts and while doing so, reveals the inner machinations and shady undercurrents of showbiz.

Further mayhem ensues when a clandestine communist organisation and twin gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) digging for celebrity dirt join the fray, setting the stage for one comic situation after another.

A prop sword becomes a thorn in the flesh for Whitlock, literally, when his clumsiness sees him stabbing himself with it repeatedly while musical star Burt Gurney’s (Channing Tatum) affection for his dog causes him to drop $100,000 into bottom of the ocean.

With a star-studded cast featuring long-time Coen brothers collaborators Brolin, Clooney and Frances McDormand, Hail, Caesar! might feel like a familiar exercise in Coen-esque humour, but in typical Coen fashion, the film tinkers with the audience’s expectations with a unique set of characters, each with their own idiosyncrasies.

While running gags abound, none is funnier than the thick Southern twang of Western film star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich). In one of the film’s funniest scenes, his unintelligible accent makes the filming of his new show almost impossible, forcing director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) to adopt hilarious measures to get the job done.

It is hard not to see Hail, Caesar! as the Coens’ personal commentary on Hollywood culture and a critique of the industry they’ve been a part of for the past three decades. Actors are portrayed as simple-minded, directors are sleazy and the media, gullible.

At the same time, the brothers pay homage to the golden age of Hollywood, peppering Hail, Caesar! with pastiches of classic film genres such as Westerns, noir and biblical epics. Every layer of the filmmaking process, from studio bigwigs making casting decisions down to film editors reviewing hours of reel footage in a dark room, is acknowledged and given their turn in the spotlight.

At its heart, this is a film about film, and a love letter to the medium of film.

Written, directed and edited by the Coen brothers themselves, the irresistibly charming Hail, Caesar! is full of their absurdist signatures and trademark wisecracks, making it the ultimate fan service for any loyal Coen follower.

‘Hail, Caesar!’ opens in theatres here on 10 March, 2016.