Ok, so I confess, Hail, Caesar!, the Coen brothers’ just released comedy about old Hollywood, beckoned me come for one reason…True Grit.
I’m not one for the brothers’ dry-witted, odd-ball, unreal life depictions – but I hoped for something soul-feeding in the way that Arkansan Mattie Ross’ hell-bent journey to find justice for her Papa’s murder via Rooster Cogburn was – or at least some modicum of appreciation for a well told story with an interesting worldview. Caesar falls way short on the story-telling, but on worldview…well, let’s just say that it requires some thought – though not worth the expenditure.
Hearing that Caesar gave some sort of homage to the glory days of MGM, and, more importantly that the theatre had just been upgraded with new motor-reclining seats, the place was packed. We stood with popcorn in hand (or in my case, pretzels in purse) as the previous patrons exclaimed Caesar’s praises on exiting (Lord knows why) – the majority of which were baby-boomers and beyond (we tend to long for the Hollywood of It’s a Wonderful Life). True to Coen form, they wish to dash any wistful dreams we may have about the once and former “goodness” of movie makers…sort of.
Whether intended or not, I found the plotline to be mostly truthful about humanity and the worldviews in which we trade. The Coen’s reflect into the story the deification of the movie industry by the audience; a subtle point that Joel and Ethan appear to mock (because it is mock-worthy).
In sorting through worldview, I have made a few observations; though I’m sure there may be more if one were to understand the backstories privy to Coen research.
The plot revolves around Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) who is the “Head of Physical Production” at Capitol Pictures in the 1950’s. He’s what was known at the time as a “fixer,” tasked with making the wrongs right and keeping bad press at bay (based on a real fixer of the same name). In the course of a little more than a day, Mannix has his hands full at every tick of the clock with possible erupting scandals. His day begins before daylight as he is paying off the police to keep quiet about one of his starlets found taking questionable pictures, but more about Mannix further down. Let’s look at some of the catastrophes he averts.
DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is a brash Esther Williams type who is pregnant out-of-wedlock and finding it hard to fit into her mermaid costume. Not wanting to marry the father, but agreeing that her squeaky clean image with the fans must be preserved, she asked if she can adopt her own child after going away for several months out of the public’s view (reminds one of Clark Cable and Loretta Young). Mannix is right on it with the studio attorney who arranges for their “surety man” Joseph Silverman (Jonah Hill) to take the child into foster care until the time is right for Moran to adopt.
Nothing is hinted that Moran considered abortion, as was the case with many starlets of the time. Not only did she want her baby to live, she didn’t want to put it up for a real adoption, opting instead to surrender to motherhood (albeit single). Her desire, or one could say, her love for the unborn child extended to the all too human understanding for the need of a father. When Silverman extends his employment-bound duty, Moran eventually finds something beyond job requirement in the gesture and they are married. Mannix is pleased.
Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is the lovable B-western star that is talented in singing, roping, and riding, but not acting. Doyle is a consistently genuine un-spoiled character – a person that can’t fake or lie to the audience. Unfortunately, he is all that is left on the lot for Mannix to substitute in an upper class film with lavish sets, evening gowns, and fine men’s suits. Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) plays the dismayed director who cannot tame the awkward ways of the simple, but respectful and apt to please Doyle. Laurentz is perhaps the polar opposite of his protagonist in appearance, temperament, character, and most of all – worldview
Doyle ultimately cannot understand the words and meaning of the director. Just as Laurentz’s name dabbles in doubling, so his life is scandal ridden with rumors of an affair with a leading man (that we will meet shortly). He and Doyle demonstrate, by way of verbal mimicry, the difficulty of the one man (and his worldview) understanding the other man (and his worldview). “Would that it were so simple,” is a brilliant line to this end.
Further along we find a scene connected to this when Mannix steps in to the cutting room to find C.C. Calhoun (Frances McDormand) editing Doyle’s scene. She rewinds her film for Mannix to review, but just before we find out if Doyle ever got the line right – her scarf gets caught in the machine and nearly chokes her to death (a ripe metaphor for the dangerous propaganda carefully crafted in Hollywood). Saved by Mannix (as is everyone), the edited film continues to reveal the line was substituted for “it’s complicated.”
Early in the film we are introduced to Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the studio star working on a biblically based epic titled Hail, Caesar: A Story of the Christ. Reminiscent of Ben Hur (Carlton Heston) and The Robe (Victor Mature), the plot is about a Roman soldier that is converted to Christianity through the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. Whitlock is drugged and kidnapped by a cabal of Hollywood screenwriters who fancy themselves as “The Future.”
They bring him to a seaside home that brought to mind a Hitchcock film, though I can’t quite place it. It is here that the impressionable feckless star is introduced to Dr. Marcuse and the ideas of Communism. The real Herbert Marcuse came from the Frankfurt school as a scholar extolling the virtues of Marx. He was a critic of capitalism and of the entertainment industry – yet in a perverse way – as the screenwriter’s point out, he was the father of the New Left and they worked to get his worldview inculcated into film. It was in this milieu that Ayn Rand found herself as a Hollywood counter-culture screen writer (think: Fountainhead).
Whitlock’s captors tell him about how the one-percent (Studio owners and bosses) have confiscated the vast wealth made from the film industry – while writers and actors are given penitence as pay. They constantly snipe at one another – but seem eager to share in the $100,000 ransom as a sort of social justice. Although Whitlock’s first reaction is to let them know how well he believes himself to be treated (and paid), he is malleable to their economic argument.
So rich in irony of today’s Hollywood where though the actors enjoy the fruit of capitalism, so quickly do they align themselves with perceived victims of the system. Never thinking to forego their wealth, status, or luxury jet rides for the cause of poverty, social justice, or global warming (respectively). Likewise, they point outward at the racist inclinations of the people in America (those other than themselves) when the irony is that they are hoisted on their own petard of #oscarssowhite.
Back at the studio Mannix is preparing the $100,000 ransom money to obtain the release of Whitlock (presumably out of petty cash – as money answers most of the crises he encounters). A sincerely conscientious man, Mannix started his day at confession where he worried with even the smallest of infractions. Even the priest was weary of his daily visits. But Mannix is a man of conviction, empathy, and fairness, not to mention a host of other admirable qualities. A likable and competent guy, we easily understand why Lockheed corporation is aggressively seeking him.The job offer in itself is a worldview conundrum for Mannix. Should he go with the easier, less stressful career where he can be home for dinner each night with his wife and two children?
It’s not that cut and dry though because just as Doyle and Laurentz found out – it is complicated. Lockheed represents the future technology that Marcuse abhors; the corporate capitalism (crony capitalism) that partners with the government to build an endless war machine. Yet, Hollywood represents, if we are to believe the screenwriters, another kind of capitalism that has gone astray from its true potential of partnering with ideologues in promoting the progressive worldview of the left. A world where one day those like Mannix will not have to “fix” actors involved in pornography, adultery, Marxism, or homosexuality (because these things will no longer be scandalous). For now Mannix is caught in the old world where the Christian Bible is the best place to find story material and where he must deal with the contradictions within the pervading Jewishness of the industry and the Christianness of the audiences.
It is the movie goers that insist that the stars live up to the characters they play on screen. Mannix is deflecting and cajoling the rumor mill columnists, two sisters (Heda Hopper crossed with the Lander’s sisters)….who are about to release the story of the torrid alleged affair of Laurentz, the director and Whitlock, the beloved actor. “Twenty-million readers want the truth Eddie!” …….”truth,” he mutters as he runs away with the ransom money in tow. Not only is his top star costing him $100,000 – the new biblical epic could go the way of Rome.
While discussing the kidnapping in his office with Doyle (the cowboy actor) – Mannix uses Doyle’s belt to secure the brief case full of ransom money. Which brings us to Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) who serves the role of dancer extraordinaire (Gene Kelley) in a homo-centric choreography to the tune of “No Dames.” It is his home in which the kidnappers are hold up. Doyle notices the belt-wrapped case in the possession of Gurney after Mannix was instructed to leave it at a particular location. Doyle follows Gurney to his home where he and the screenwriters (along with Dr. Marcuse) are piled into a dingy with the ransom money and are headed out to sea. Met by a rising soviet submarine, Gurney climbs the metal ladder to board when the adoring occupants of the boat insist that he take with him the $100,000 in ransom – for the cause.
It is in this scene that one gets a sense of the “religious” nature of even the most confessing atheistic worldview. While once complaining about capitalism and justifying their demand for the ransom because they deserved more of the wealth brought in by means of their art (namely screenwriting) – they now in unison freely sacrificially give their spoils (“It’s not ransom….it’s payback!”) to the communist gods on some distant blissful shore of utopia. Gurney’s indifference to them when he drops the briefcase into the sea is typical of statism that requires the liberty of individuals only to be wasted, as no greater good is ever accomplished (except for the elite).
Mannix is on a mission, perhaps divine. The story around the story is the metaphor of Mannix as a Christ figure, taking direction from the studio god on phone line, paying ransom, and getting help from the Holy Spirit figure of the meek Doyle as he reveals to him that the culprit behind the kidnapping is most likely “extras” and then capturing the prodigal son (Whitlock) and returning him to a place of repentance at the foot of the cross. Perhaps the Coen’s are mocking at the Trinity in substituting Hollywood for the godhead….but in the eyes of many Americans, the worship of celebrity is not off the mark.
In an extraordinarily biblically correct climax – Whitlock, who is mesmerizing in his description of the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ toward humanity, and who has all those in the studio raptured toward belief – fumbles the final line of which he cannot recall the one ingredient necessary for finding truth. As he mutters and swears at his faulty memory, his fellow cast members and studio staff barks out “faith!”Ah, the one thing necessary, but so elusive in Hail, Caesar!
In the end, the film just fizzes out in typical post-modern fashion. There are no heroes, no redemption, no meta-narrative (just a bunch of micro-narratives) that leave one feeling that nothing matters because we’re all headed to Armageddon (as the scene with Lockheed reminds us). Very unsatisfactory indeed.
Graced Grit 
While the masses lined up out the door to see Deadpool, Ashley and I went to see this last night. Your critique is very accurate.
I kept wondering if Whitlock was simply acting to save himself? The Gurney character was the most interesting. I could tell by the previews what direction the dancing scene was going to go, but it wasn’t as explicit as I expected. Would you say Mannix is no John Galt? I would because he ultimately decides to stay in the present, instead of working for the future.
I can appreciate that it will take several viewings and research to catch all the references in the movies. I imagine it would make it more humorous to do so.
This being the Cohen brothers – I’m going to guess that Ayn Rand and her characters show up nowhere in the plot. The Cohen’s are either ignorant or dismiss “objectivism” out right. Or, perhaps objectivism isn’t funny…I doubt the latter because they threw Marcuse in and he isn’t funny. It would have been funny to have Ayn in the room with all those men. Talk about tension….Gurney was the anti-Rand – as he was going back to the Soviet Union – where she had come out…
At any rate – it is a good observation though that Mannix was a man of the “present.” I find this to be true of most of the powerful and wealthy. Keep things as they are…ignore the rising tide….this is why the ESTABLISHMENT on both sides of the isle are in a heap of trouble.
Whitlock was trying to save himself – but he wasn’t that worried…remember how easily he accepted his kidnapping scenario? Just calmly went in and took a seat. No – I think he was the “moron” that Cohen’s intended him to be – it was a slap at Charlton Heston and other leading men that to the Cohen’s would have been easily – mindlessly swayed in their ideology (think Ronald Reagan). The redeeming thing about Whitlock is that he so clearly depicted the actors that are unmoored from Western Civ and into leftist ideas….not based on the idea itself – but for the crusade against PERCIEVED injustice….for Whitlock was never endangered by Capitalism – he was enriched. They taught him to “saw at the branch upon which he sat” (Orwell)
I was thinking later that the sisters “doubleness” could refer to the way the columnist/press wines and dines only to stab you in the back later.
As is the case with anyone who opposes capitalism, these men are those that enjoy capitalism’s benefits yet mock and degrade its very nature. It really is all about the money to them and as long as they have a hearty share of it, they are willing to say anything they want in order to make it seem as if they achieve their great wealth by simply denying capitalism and embracing the new idea of ‘communism’ the system in which everyone can get equal amounts of everything. when in fact it is the opposite.
A great quote by Cory Booker this week was the advice his father gave him…”Son, never act as if you got a ‘triple’ when you were born on third base.” What he meant by this – was that we all “build” on the success of others” and yet we fool ourselves when we act as if we did it all ourselves – by our merit, talent, political philosophy, etc…..everyone in this nation benefits from the ideas of capitalism and free markets – they were “born on third base” so to say….we all benefit also most greatly from the ideas of Christianity – and the Western tradition that it produced. Good insight KidKool3.
Yes good observations. However I do have a question. What do we say to those that claim socialism is proven to work because “we all benefit” and “no one accomplished anything on their own”? It would seem both sides claim community as evidence to their claim of superiority.
In a real sense – this is true and has always been true. Free markets are the MOST helpful in this regard – as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in our American Exceptionalism….we ban together to provide infrastructure, security, etc…but when the central government (i.e. socialism – or crony capitalism) try to make the case that the government is the best cohesive agent to benefit the whole – this is simply not the case, because while it may have some benefit to the masses – it ALWAYS benefits those in power whether governmental or Corporate or Wall Street. It ALWAYS breeds corruption. Absolute power corrupts ABSOLUTELY. (Lord Acton) We see this at work in our current presidential election in which we have become so Nationalized that other states (interests) are pouring money into state elections for judges, local authorities, etc…that used to have no reason to do so. This takes power away from the state and local voters. It is not good for individual liberty or prosperity.
Socialism is not proven to work except over a short period of time (in the “short-run” as Keynes would have it) – it cannot sustain itself in the long-run (for which Keynes did not care because we are all dead by then) – because you run out of other peoples money – and by the time that happens the rich and powerful don’t care because they made out like bandits during the entire process.
On the other hand – Free Markets provide personal – individual incentives. A community is only as strong as its weakest link. While no economic system is perfect due to our fallen natures (bent toward greed, avarice, licentiousness, etc.) – close to home – close to the individual is best for caring in the concrete – not in the abstract (as socialism does so well).
Both sides do make claims. Problem is that Free Markets have been diminished in this country for over 100 years – certainly since Keynes and FDR. Our economic system presently (according to college textbooks) is called Welfare Capitalism (a blend or synthesis of socialism and free market). Of course we all understand that the balance or tipping is toward socialism and becoming more so all the time.
We are not free any longer – and therefore – yes – we can’t accomplish anything on our own hardly anymore. That is, without government interference and control. The owner of the Subway stated a few years ago that he would not be able to start up his chain of stores in today’s business environment. So how many Subway-like start-ups have never even made it to first base? Today – you have a good chance of making it ONLY if you were born on third base…..and that includes those whose parents have connections, especially government, Wall Street, and Corporate connections.
The system is unfair – unequal today due to socialism (because it gives power to the elite government and corporate interests). Socialism in many respects gave rise to the 1 percenters. When government and big business become partners – the people always lose…Capitalism today has strayed from FREE MARKET principles and enjoys the welfare it gets from cronyism. So I guess the answer is that both systems are wrong for the majority of people to prosper in today’s economic climate.
Post Modernism is referred to in the 7th paragraph from the end. It is eluded to as a solution of Hollywood’s closedmindedness. Hollywood according to the screenwriters should ideally not have to hire men such as Mannix because there should be no scandal. By no scandal, I don’t mean it won’t happen, but morals, absolutes, and words will erode(deconstruction) . Therefore, pluralism will reign, and everything will be seen as relative.