There seems to be a bit of a confluence of themes and actors at the moment.
TRUMBO deals with Hollywood of the Fifties, RISEN deals with the story of the Christ, and now, The Coen Brothers’ latest film, HAIL, CAESAR deals with both!
Josh Brolin is back in the Brothers’ bosom playing Capitol Pictures all round fix it maven, Head of Physical Production is his shingle, Eddie Mannix. Each film on the studio’s slate comes complete with its own headache, and Mannix is tasked with finding a solution to every one of them.
In one piss funny early scene, Eddie consults an Eastern Orthodox clergyman, a Catholic priest, a Protestant pastor and a Jewish rabbi to discuss the religious content of a Roman epic; the ensuing discussion pokes deft fun at the petty sectarianism of organized religion, and the ease with which it can be pounded and churned into big-screen kitsch.
Not so easy is dealing with the kidnapping of the studio’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock, the witless lead in the Biblical picture, Hail, Caesar, abducted by a band of blacklisted writers and alienated extras. Here’s George Clooney again enlisted by the Coen’s to portray a dumb cluck and as usual Clooney rises to the challenge.
Clooney the loony certainly fills the sandals of a matinee idol with hidden scandals, and feels absolutely right in his speech made at the foot of the cross at Calvary. He is much more of the Robert Taylor Quo Vadis/Richard Burton The Robe style of centurion than Joseph Fiennes portrayal of the convertible tribune in Risen.
Joseph’s big brother Ralph Fiennes is in HAIL, CAESAR, playing a film director, Laurence Lorenz, a name that launches limber limerick linguistics as does his direction of an actor into how to say a line. Sublime.
The actor in question is Hobie Doyle, Capitol Studio’s prize cowboy star, now lassoed into a sophisticated urban comedy, and re-badged, Hobart Doyle. It’s a marvellous turn by Alden Ehrenreich, whose name back in the Fifties would have been changed to God knows what!
Reteaming with the Brothers Coen after fifteen years, Scarlett Johansson plays Dee Anna Moran as an Esther Williams style aquatic star. Eschewing the temptation of naming her Ethel Mermaid, the Coen’s do assign her a Loretta Young scenario which brings her into the orbit of Jonah Hill’sJoseph Silverman.
Another memorable cameo comes from Coen Brothers staple, Frances McDormand, playing a chain smoking film editor with a penchant for scarves.
Channing Tatum channels Gene Kelly as Capitol Studio’s song and dance divo, Burt Gurney, in a strictly bar room choreography that illustrates HAIL, CAESAR ‘s achievement as being great because of the sum of its parts.
Tilda Swinton pops up as twin sisters, Thora and Thessaly Thacker, a symbiotic hydra of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
Delicious cameos continue with Christopher Lambert as an emigre European director working on the Capitol lot and John Bluthal as a Marxist academic instructing screenwriters in economic activism.
Possibly the only one missing is Coen alumni John Goodman, but he is seen in TRUMBO, playing a very Coen character, so the confluence in the recent cinematic scrabble would seem divine.
HAIL CAESAR , Hail the Coen Brothers, Hail the All Stars!
