A Hilarious Tribute to, and Teardown of, Hollywood's Golden Age
The Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a fixer at fictional mega-studio Capitol Pictures whose job involves retaining the studio's clean and respectable image by cleaning up after its top talents. When George Clooney's Baird Whitlock—the star of the in-production Christ story (and film within the film) Hail, Caesar!—mysteriously disappears, he jumps to the top of a list that includes managing a single star's pregnancy, putting a cowboy in a high society picture, and contending with dueling twin gossip columnists. Hail, Caesar! is jam-packed with ideas and jokes about religion, communism and Old Hollywood, yet featherlight in a way that makes it a terrific, breezy comedy bubbling with intellectual heft.
The Coens demonstrate an obvious affection for the kinds of films the big studios like MGM used to churn out, as they showcase brief sequences from many of Capitol Pictures' upcoming films. From the titular Roman epic's prologue to a sailor musical number featuring Channing Tatum, each of these asides is a pitch perfect recreation of the aesthetic of the films they're lovingly parodying. Tatum's number is particularly sly, as the music and choreography appear ripped from a Gene Kelly film while the not-so-subtle homosexual undertones take the sequence from imitation to smart satire. Key to Hail, Caesar! feeling like a film from Hollywood's Golden Age despite its winking references is longtime Coens collaborator Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography. He gives even the most basic scenes a rich color palette and subtle softness, and in some places, even a sense of artifice.
That warmth with a hint of movie magic fakery is applied to the excellent, larger than life performances from a cast that would be any studio's dream team. Brolin makes a perfect zany straight man to the craziness he manages while Clooney, Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, and breakout Alden Ehrenreich give life to a wide range of personalities behind their Capitol Pictures movie star personas. Ralph Fiennes shines as cultured director Laurence Laurentz—whose patience is tested with Ehrenreich's earnest western star being placed into his talky drama—while Tilda Swinton steals her scenes as the dramatic gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly.
From its look to its gleeful lampooning of Hollywood, the film Hail, Caesar! most reminds me of is Singin' in the Rain. While that 1952 classic is a send-up of and tribute to Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies, the Coens have crafted a film that does the same to the studio system that gave us Gene Kelly singin' and dancin' in the rain. On one level Hail, Caesar! celebrates Hollywood's Golden Age—the beloved films and the reigning capitalism and conservatism that made them possible—and on another it tears into that inherent contradiction with sublime comedic results.