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'Hail, Caesar!' Proves We Need New Cinema Heroes

Because hints of change are all around us, just not at the movies. Yet.

Dorothy Woodend 13 Feb 2016TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other week for The Tyee.

We need a change.

This thought occurred to me in the middle of Hail, Caesar!, the new Coen brothers' film.

It's been circling around for months, but the feeling landed with a thud in the middle of what was supposed to be a lark of film. Let me save you some money and time spent in the hollowed out horror that is the Cineplex cinema chain. Run away. Save yourself.

The damn film stinks like week-old fish, but that is certainly not its worst crime. If it's meant to be a comedy, it's not funny. And if it's meant to give an arch and winking nod to the Golden Age of the studio system, it's unclear who is being lampooned. Perhaps it is we, the dunderheaded audience, who simply aren't in on the joke.

Most critics have decided that the film is a bitchy love letter to the good old days, when movie stars did what studio bosses told them, women were dames, and dirty commies got what was coming to them, meaning a good hard slap in the puss. But despite the effort poured in, the no-expense-spared Gene Kelly-esque dance routines, the Busby Berkley-esque spectacles, the star power -- George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Tilda Swinton and Josh Brolin -- there is no life here. Only the pale imitation of something musty and old and best left unmolested.

How many times must the Golden days of Hollywood be resurrected before we give up and declare the damn stuff off-limits? Even Christ only had to rise from the dead once, but the old timey movies have risen from the grave more often that zombie hordes. There is something of the undead at work in Hail, Caesar! as well. Maybe I have a deep and uneasy relationship with old Hollywood from early exposure to Kenneth Anger's rancid tell-all Hollywood Babylon. The book is filled with stories of starlet suicides, actors eaten by their dogs, rape, murder, decapitation, etc. Lurid does not even begin to cover it. There are photos of Jayne Mansfield's death scene and the Black Dahlia's bisected body, and more sex scandals that one can shake a whip at. Don't ask me how I came to be reading such a book at a tender age, but I would regularly slip it from the bookcase in my grandparent's house and read it in secret. All the lust and sad sordid death sank in like a scent composed of decaying orchids, stale cigarettes and old lady perfume. So, in short, old Hollywood kind of gives me the creeps.

But here 'tis again, reanimated with money and power, brought back to the big screen through the clout of the Brothers Coen.

This shtick again?

This isn't the first time the Coens have gone back to the past and to pastiche. The Hudsucker Proxy had more art direction than it knew what to do with, plus Tim Robbins, Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in full His Girl Friday mode. That film at least had some novelty factor, coming as it were right after the success of Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. Still, it was a terrible movie in 1994 and is still terrible today.

Some things should stay dead. But no, here we go, all over again.

If you would like a plot recap of Hail, Caesar! let me boil it down for you. Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a fixer for the fictional Hollywood studio Capitol Pictures. Remember that name, kids, it will be important later on. Despite his crushing Catholic guilt that requires regular trips to the confessional, like a man suffering from religious diarrhea, Mannix manages to juggle both family life and the movie business. The real life Mannix was a somewhat more unsavoury character implicated in a plot to kill a movie star, but that's another (more interesting) story. Here he is depicted as the pious businessman with a heart of a gold who handles studio bosses, the police and the press without raising his voice, or even sneaking a cigarette. Meanwhile at home, his June Cleaver clone wife keeps an impeccable house, reheats the meatloaf and looks after the couple's adorable tow-headed children.

Back in Hollywood, the stars, like far naughtier children, must be corralled and managed like toddlers on speed. This one had secret gay sex with that one, that other one got embroiled with a communist cell, and this one went and got herself knocked up sans husband. In the midst of all this nuttiness, Mannix keeps sneaking off to deliver rather wan confessions to a bored priest.

The action really kicks off when the studio's biggest star, a hunky knucklehead named Baird Whitlock (Clooney), is spirited away by a mysterious group calling itself the future. A ransom note demanding $100,000 is duly received. Mannix trudges off to raise the dough and get his star back in time to finish the picture. Meanwhile on another soundstage of the massive Capitol Pictures lot, aquatic superstar DeeAnna Morgan (Johansson) can barely wiggle into her mermaid tale on account of her swelling belly. She needs a husband fast, and ''no saps or swishes,'' as the lady says. Mannix, ever the fixer, delivers. And so on… You get the picture.

At this point, I believe the instructions are to crank up the screwball fizz and resurrect the Mid-Atlantic accent in all its snapping energy and bite. It's meant to be fun, right? A hoot, a lark, a rat-a-tat-tat of dames, gams, and saucy hats. Commies and nancy boys are the real enemies, especially the double whammy of the two combined. But for all these tooty-fruity loops of plot, nothing really sticks. Hobie Carmichael (Alden Ehrenreich), the studio's singing cowboy is tapped to do a swishy picture presided over by an effete Englishman named Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes).

If you fail to find endless mispronunciations of Laurence's confounding name amusing, you're in for a long night. Mannix plods along, leading with his massive forehead, and the audience trails along for lack of anything better to do. Occasionally the film stops so the movie stars can put on a show, tap dancing like performing dogs doing super nifty rope tricks. Tilda Swinton, playing twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker, does some business with frightening hats and clipped accents. In the end, the established order is maintained, Mannix gets his star back, the commies get what is coming to them, and the cameras roll.

Safe, familiar and white

I must admit, I found the film perplexing. What exactly is or was the point? If Hail, Caesar! is meant to be a celebration of the olden days when the old boys ruled without question or quibble, ok… I am not certain why anyone would want to return to days of yore, except for the fact that it is safe and familiar. But it's also a crashing bore. Like your dad trying to make you appreciate jazz.

There are moments here and there of vague amusement (rope tricks are cool) but despite the endless round of star cameos and the attention paid to set design (coast modern) and costume (fat ties), nothing sticks. There is no feeling here except the mild discomfit that comes from being talked down to and patronized. All the inside jokes are just that. Barton Fink was a screenwriter for Capitol Pictures, don't you know. Rub your goatee and chortle knowingly under your breath if you're a critic. If you're a regular person, cross your arms across your chest and curse the fact you paid $12 to see this damn thing.

Here's the rub. This is an insider film all the way, and that clammy insularity is not only a super snooze, it's clubhouse, a place where the boys and girls can tell each other inside jokes and put on private shows. Much has been written about the Coen bros making movies to please themselves. Which is fine I guess, just don't expect anyone else to care.

It almost goes without saying that this is also one of the whitest films around. The only people of colour in this world exist to make Chinese food, serve Mai Tais, and open doors for the white man. (Forgive an aside for a moment, but if one more elderly actor issues one more boneheaded remark about diversity, folks are going to get their heads knocked together.)

But the worst thing about a film like Hail, Caesar! is how irrelevant it is. The Coen brothers are certainly not alone in this. Every time Woody Allen makes a new film, I think: please stop! Your time is over, old man. It's time for something new, something different. Give someone else the money and time poured into such an exercise in directorial noodling and self indulgence to see what they can do with it.

Which takes me back to my original thought. We need a change.

Or maybe the change is already here -- it's just not in the movie theatres yet. In other cultural playgrounds, be it music or television or podcasts, there is all manner of interesting new stuff popping up, be it Queen Bey or this lovely little song called ''You Stupid Bitch,'' which made me almost fall out of my chair the other day. Or even this little fact, which might change how we conceive of the universe.

Dump fusty, old pastiche in the trashcan and move on, peoples. Maybe something new is finally on its way, come aborning on cool new gravitational waves.  [Tyee]

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