“People don’t want the facts, they want to believe.” That’s a line from the new Joel and Ethan Coen film “Hail, Caesar!” – and a fair summation of their outlook as writer/directors.
This time around, rather than presenting a vérité version of the studio system in the early ‘50s, they have fun making a movie comprised of scenes from other movies.
The straw that stirs the fantastical drink is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer whose perambulations around the Capitol Pictures lot (think MGM) make up the bulk of the narrative. We get exquisite glimpses at genre pictures, from DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) in a synchronized aquatic number – the water never seems to touch her – to Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) in a witty sailor song-and-dance escapade.
Mannix also finds Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, the revelation of the piece), a cowboy stuntman turned western star, who is comfortable making lassos from spaghetti noodles but less so when he’s stuffed into a tux and pushed into the drawing room of a women’s picture.
He’s directed by Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes, ascot firmly in place) who’s accustomed to Rodeo Drive not rodeo clowns. Rekindling all the fussiness of his “Grand Budapest” hotelier, Fiennes’ elocution instructions to Hobie on the phrase “would that it were so simple” lead to a long, “Who’s on first”-style riff – it’s brilliant, old-fashioned comedy.
And these productions are complementary gems next to Capitol’s prestige picture of the season, the titular “Hail, Caesar!”
The sword-and-sandals epic stars Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, always happy to play a boob for the Coen brothers) until he’s drugged and kidnapped by a cabal of pinko screenwriters called “The Future.”
The allusion to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s worst nightmare is just one of a dizzying volume of references to classic cinema – another great one is Hobie’s arranged date to a premiere, Carlotta Valdez, who borrows a name from “Vertigo” and game from Carmen Miranda.
The only criticism of the film is that there isn’t more of it – more scenes from DeeAnna’s mermaid reverie, more of Burt’s anchors a-weighing. It’s the same way we wish for more films starring Johansson and Tatum, pumped out in the studio days when stars found their wheelhouse and made hay.
The fixer is offered a job at Lockheed, all jets and space and the most extraordinary future available in the ‘50s – but Mannix knows that Hollywood dreams are greater, and last longer.
“Hail, Caesar!” is a fond backward glance at a system that, in spite of its (apparently everlasting) sexism and racial bias, put artists to work churning out all these films, many of which still shine.
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“Hail, Caesar!” is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated PG-13. Running time 1:46. Visit www.cinemawest.com.
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