take two on faith!
by Douglas Messerli
Ethan
Coen and Joel Coen (screenplay and directors) Hail, Caesar! / 2016
Who’d
a thunk that the Coen Brothers, after all their often cynical satires of anything
sacred, would have written and directed not only a valentine to Hollywood (a
far cry from their bitter vision of the industry in Barton Fink), but would center a work on faith? I suppose one might
try to categorize their dark comedy based on the Biblical tale of Job, A Serious Man, as being a work about
belief; but the God of that world is so mean that it would be hard to see it as
a fair-minded discussion of the issue.
Meanwhile, the studio is shooting an epic
film in the mode of Ben Hur, Spartacus,
and The Robe in which a Roman warrior
meets up with Christ and, at the crucifixion, is converted to Christianity. Mannix
even attempts to bring together church leaders—Roman Catholic and Russian
Orthodox priests, a protestant minister and a rabbi—to make certain that the
studio’s representation of Christ will offend no one. The panel has no problem
with the scriptwriter’s presentation of Christ, but has all sorts of ancillary
issues about their varying religious viewpoints. The chariot-race, so the
Russian Orthodox priest opines, “is not believable.”
Moreover, the entire film, while clearly
satirizing the Los Angeles industry, does so in a quite delightful way, by
dishing out lovely tributes to Esther Williams, the musical-dancing films of
Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Donald O’Connor, the sophisticated dramas/comedies
of Alfred Hitchcock, Anatole Litvak, Michael Curtiz, and Preston Sturges, and
even the simple-minded cowboy yarns with figures such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry,
and Kirby Grant.
Of course, we expect the inflated and
wooden speeches of the Roman-Christian spectacular; accept the fact that the
beautiful mermaid is a course-speaking woman who has suddenly discovered that
she is pregnant with no husband in sight; joyously laugh at the dancers whose nostalgic
routine reveals these sailors
might actually
prefer a world “without dames” (praise be to choreographer Christopher Gattelli); and grant that the cowboy—great
horseman, lasso artist, and delightful singer he is—has little in the way of
brains! They are all quite loveable, including the Carmen Miranda-like Carlotta
Valdez (Veronica Osorio)—a name which, obviously, references Hitchcock’s Vertigo—who has an absolutely mirthful
dinner with the cowboy-hero, who even lassos up his spaghetti in a kind of
strange reference, presumably, to Spaghetti Westerns.
Only the Tatum character, Gurney, reveals
himself as a turncoat, a gay dancer who is determined to escape to Russia to
express his Communist sympathies—and we surely know where that will end.
Okay, while Whitlock finally sustains a
moment of convincing acting, cinematically declaiming how he had come about
Christ serving water up to the slaves, he forgets the last word, “faith!” But
we know on the next take he will get it right. And the Coens, in their embrace
of this fabulation, have convinced us—and maybe even themselves—once again that
what they do is something of worth—even if, I also believe, this work is more a
comic pastiche than a sustained narrative creation.
Los Angeles,
February 20, 2016
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