This is a great movie, a refreshing
one, the kind of movie we don’t regret laying down our hard-to-come-by dollars
to see, one we can enjoy thoroughly on the spot, and then have something of
value to take away with us. If you don’t
get anything else out of our review, or, if you stop reading with this
sentence, just take this with you: the Coen Brothers have hit the jackpot with
this one. They’ve done something very
hard to do: they have actually managed to portray a character who is good, not
just innocent, but good.
Simone Weil, the profound French
Christian thinker who sacrificed her own life identifying with the plight of
her fellow Jews who were suffering in WWII concentration camps, observed in her
essay “Morality and Literature”:
“Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually refreshing
and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and
boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic
good and evil. With fictional good and
evil it is the other way around. Fictional
good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing,
attractive, profound, and full of charm.”[1]
Depicting good accurately is the challenge before all artists.
Portraying
goodness is not to be confused with depicting innocence. “Hail, Caesar!” also beautifully portrays
innocence in the character of Hobie Doyle, a western star catapulted wide-eyed
with wonder into a dramatic role, played with style, grace, and an engaging
bonhomie by Alden Ehrenreich. Innocence, however,
can be corrupted, but goodness has made its choice.
Across the board the acting is first
rate in all the supporting roles (no ringers in this film), led by the
versatile George Clooney, who turns in a convincing imitation of shallow in his
deft portrayal of Autolicus[2] (the
name suggests auto-localized, or self-absorbed). But the real focus, as the voiceover reveals (while
it, along with the lighting and photography) helps deliver the gritty nostalgic
feel of the past’s B-level movie frame of comic film noir around the making of
an A-level project, is Josh Brolin’s Eddie Mannix, according to the film’s
website, “ A studio fixer with an endless supply of problems to fix, Eddie’s
work is never done. Whether bribing the cops to prevent one of his stars from
being hauled in on a morals charge or ensuring an epic picture doesn’t tank,
the devoted husband may have two kids at home…but he has many more children to
wrangle on the lot.” What this doesn’t say
is that Josh Brolin’s Oscar-level performance as protagonist Eddie Mannix
conveys a studio executive with a deep and abiding faith in Jesus who may be jaded
with the behavior of his actors but still maintains faith in the value of the
film he is helping them create, an epic on the life of Christ as seen through
the eyes of a Victor Mature-type Roman soldier.
A daily attender of confession, who even wears out his priest with his
laundry list of minor sins (with confessions like “I lied to my wife and smoked
one – no, maybe two cigarettes), Eddie’s faithful check-in every 24-27 hours is
essential for him to keep himself on a personally virtuous course, for, as the
studio fixer, he must set the tone of morality for all these morally bankrupt,
or at least salvage their reputations as family-friendly, even if that means
bribing the police to look the other way as he rescues a starlet from
destroying her career by posing for “French postcards,” or slapping around a
recalcitrant actor whose McCarthy era misjudgment may destroy the entire
film. His is a real, devout, and
lived-out faith in God and goodness contextualized in the real world –
delivered with just the right measure of sincere, flawed, fervent orthodoxy –
or as close as he can stumble into it.
Much of the credit for this
accomplishment, of course, goes to the writing, directing, and producing of
this movie, all in the hands of Joel and Ethan Coen, whose award-winning films
like “Brother, Where Art Thou?” had well integrated religious tones. In “Hail, Caesar!” they support the honoring
of faith in God right up to a closing sign glimpsed in the final shot on a
water tower in the distance – and, even beyond that, to the ironic announcement
at the end of the credits in place of the usual announcement that no animal has
been hurt in the making of this film: the assurance that no depiction of God
has been made in this movie.
Such comic under-cuttings continually
keep this film from becoming pretentious or maudlin by taking itself too
seriously, and, yet, the humor relief is so well done that, when we in the
audience are through laughing, we are left with an after-thought that highlights
the sober fact that every endeavor that seeks to influence people is serious
business and must be held accountable for what it conveys. For Eddie Mannix, the usual fatuous ploy –
“Well, if you don’t like what we do or show, just turn it off or leave the
theater!” – is not an option. He knows
the impact on the public of immoral behavior and immoral films and he works
very hard to beat something of moral value he can be proud to show his own
family out of these self-absorbed, morally clueless thespians and directors and
the parasites and piranha that swim hungrily around them.
Even the villains in this movie are
sympathetically portrayed. What
motivates them is explained and they are all likeable pawns, deluded by forces
so sinister not one them apprehends, understands, or even glimpses the real
intentions beyond the theoretical hoopla the intelligentsia churns out or the
chilling reality the arms manufacturers present as inevitable destiny. In all this flux, Eddie Mannix’s job is to
understand and to control the damage done in his own sphere of influence and
the film’s tension is about whether or not he can continue to accept this
taxing responsibility as a mission for his life.
The central message that we, as
viewers, take away from this film is that of Deuteronomy 6:18: “Do what is
right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you.” God wants each of us to do the right thing at
each moment of our lives and there is no message greater that each one of us
needs to hear in today’s morally stumbling world.
We hail “Hail, Caesar!” – and even think
the nearly implacable Simone Weil would have enjoyed this film and found it
worthwhile.
Bill and Aίda
p.s.
Those who want to read an enjoyable book of sometimes chilling but ultimately
uplifting real life experiences of those surviving the temptations of Hollywood
to create the current Hollywood spiritual and moral revival, please watch for
Jeanne DeFazio and Bill’s forthcoming book (due this spring), Redeeming the Screens, from the House of
Prisca and Aquila series of Wipf and Stock Publishers (available on the House
of Prisca Aquila website, Wipf and Stock’s website, Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
etc.).
[1] You can find this quotation and
similar wisdom both in this essay and “On the Responsibility of Writers”
collected in The Simone Weil Reader,
ed. George A. Panichas (Mount Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1977). This quotation is on page 290.
[2] Please note: spelling not able
to be confirmed.
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