Would that It Were All So Simple

At least half of the Coen brothers' movies are set sometime during the 1920s-1960s and all of their films take place in America. The brothers are among the brightest talents to emerge from American independent cinema in the 1980s. Their diligence resulted in the back-to-back independently produced hits Fargo (1996, Coen brothers) and The Big Lebowski (1998) securing their futures with the freedom to continue working on projects of their own choice.

I've learned that some Coen brothers movies stay with me. Barton Fink (1991, Coen), Fargo (1996 Coen), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001, Coen), No Country for Old Men (2007, Coen), and A Serious Man (2009, Coen) for example, are what I call the heavy ones. They're dark, sure, but they also all open with angst and a foreboding, ominous, dark moral storm already brewing that never lets up.

But I've also learned that my response and relationship to their heavy ones doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of their lighter work.

The setting of Hail, Caear! (2016, Coen) is what is most important about it. 1950s Hollywood connotes myths, rumors, and gossip about stars, communism, sex, drugs, and all sorts of lurid pulp fodder--pretty much the dramatic elements of every James Ellroy novel. But we also have novels like Day of the Locust, The Last Tycoon, and What Makes Sammy Run? that provide similar noir tones to the fatal peril of Hollywood's lure. The point is there's a lot about that time we'll never know.

But in the hands of the Coen brothers, Hail, Caesar! is a well-executed love letter to Hollywood studio filmmaking of the classical era. And the reality of technology's pace is hard to ignore. The first sound movie was 1927 and by the mid 50s, when Hail, Caesar! takes place, it is already the end of the studio era. So short. In addition Hail, Caesar! could likely be the last movie the Coens or Roger Deakins shoot on film.

Like the fake trailers from Grindhouse (2007, Rodriguez/Tarantino) or Tropic Thunder (2008, Ben Stiller), the movies-within-the-movie are the best part of Hail, Caesar! From the opening footage of Hail, Caesar! (the movie-within-the-movie not the movie itself) we get the thrill of knowing we're watching parody, knowing we'll only be watching a few moments of any given movie, yet still suspended in a mixture of nostalgia, recognition, awe, and contempt that that's what people actually watch.

Among the coincidental similarities in the movie, we have BAIRD WHITLOCK (George Clooney) playing a Roman politician; with the "Caesar" hairdo, we recall Clooney's breakout in ER with, what else, the "Caesar" hairdo. The dancing sailor played by Channing Tatum obviously isn't a far stretch from Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderbergh). And the Esther Williams footage is all about Williams' star status, so Johansson is perfect casting.

Along with the footage of the Roman epic, the aquatic number performed by Scarlett Johansson was breathtaking, fun, impressive and the height of how high the success of Hollywood's studio system soared. Johansson swims in an underwater tank, air bubbles from her breathing, hair and makeup to the nines, in a body of water where a mechanical whale emerges in the center of Busby Berkeley-style synchronized swimming rings of female dancers. The spout sprouts a geyser rising and rising until Johansson is revealed atop its very peak, to gracefully dive down below. As she's underwater the camera moves in to be close on her perfect face as it arises, every hair in place, her make-up immaculate and unsmirched.

Tatum's Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen style  barroom dance number with all the sailors was too much. The Coens showcase so much of what still makes these old movies so magical.

While Hail, Caesar! may at times feel episodic, I think it only enhances the entertainment value of the movie. We want to just walk around the studio lot, that's why we came. The plot feels like a throwaway, kind of like Burn After Reading (2009, Coen). It's not really important what happens to MANNIX (Josh Brolin). Mannix is our entrance into the day to day chaos of what goes on behind and in front of the scenes. Hail, Caesar!'s ingenious ending makes it clear that this is just another week in Mannix's life, and it might not even be the craziest he'll deal with, not by a longshot. Mannix is also a great counterpart to the manic delirium of Hail, Caesar!'s pace. He's a pragmatist. And what a funny detail with him and his only apparent vice: he's quit smoking and when he finally goes to confession he admits to having a couple of cigarettes.

Last word on the cast, Ralph Fiennes as director LAURENCE LAURENTZ steals the show. As the gentleman director, Fiennes finesses the dialogue and I don't know who he's supposed to be, if anyone, but I'm guessing Ernst Lubitsch. For such a short amount of screen-time, Laurentz brings more comedy than I could have ever expected.

So aside from the macguffin conspiracy thread, Hail, Caesar! is escapist entertainment of the classic variety. Sure it's light, a diversion. And sure sometimes I wonder if that makes a movie a failure. But this time I say not. Hail, Caesar! is an excellent comedy, and one with wit, insight, and a genuine love of its subject.

--Dregs

The More You Look at Something the Less You See

After Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, and David Lynch, the Coen Brothers are the most crucial American filmmakers I have followed, appreciated, and critically studied for my entire adult life.

To separate movies from films, the Coen Brothers' widely praised works are typically their movies: Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007) and True Grit (2010); and unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've had the desire to revisit these in hopes of finding something new.

However, their films: Barton Fink (1991), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and A Serious Man (2009) easily remain some of the most intellectually stimulating and classically entertaining narratives any American filmmakers have crafted since the 1990s, in the modern era. Yet, their movies are necessary to identify them as auteurs, and their films only become stronger if you take their body of work as a whole.

Yesterday The Man Who Wasn't There screened in a 35mm print at a theatre. Since this movie was shot on 35mm and converted to a DI, watching it on DVD or digitally projected in a theatre leaves something to be desired. However, seeing the film projected in 35mm returns the black and white converted DI to its native analog look because the print shows dirt, dust and other debris and feels like you're watching an old black and white movie from the 40s.

The black and white look and the film's period small town somewhere near Sacramento, CA setting make this a Film Noir. Normally I confine Noirs between 1941-1958, but this 2001 movie qualifies because they set their film back then. But this isn't merely a Film Noir. It's more like the Coen Brothers making a Neo Noir because they are drawing heavily from the established conventions of historical Film Noirs, but have crafted the film as an existential crisis--with a plethora of big questions, most notably: "What kind of a man are you?" And in addition to all of this, they have succeeded in delivering one of their most sparkling deadpan comedies, with one of their most uniquely droll and prosaic assortment of everyday small town folk, dryly skewering all things ordinary.

The look of this film separates it from B-movie Noirs. Roger Deakins primarily using the barbershop, photographs sublimely contrasty, detail cluttered set pieces almost as gorgeous as images Henri Alekan achieved in Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, Wim Wenders). Also, the Nerdlinger's department store features cavernous shadows and broad pillars of blackness against smoky shafts of light that create geometrically designed representations of the protagonist's psychological inner chaos like the films John Alton shot in the late '40s. And notice the striking use of medium to medium close up-framed dolly tracking shots, overcranked, and often rain soaked; these are among the most lyrical segues in the film.

Some of the strongest evidence to support categorizing this film as a Film Noir is Ed Crane's guarded near-paranoia. He's cynical, as are most hard-boiled Noir protagonists. And he's our narrator, so in a way, the film is cynical. Film Noir often means an American looks around sometime after The War and realizes people, society, or the government aren't what they seem. This is Ed Crane's path. Sizing people up seems to be his only reason for living. And he usually concludes that they're all phonies. Think about how often he slings that slur.

Birdy almost takes on an existential significance, as she's obviously something like a manifestation of Crane's ideal female. And in the glorious scene where she attempts to give him fellatio as a consolation prize, Crane's dreams are finally shattered once and for all, causing him to take account of his place in the universe one last time.

Existential is a big label that gets thrown around way to much. I'm not saying I'm the one to categorize this film as such, but I think it does ask big questions instead of setting the same conflicts and resolutions as most plot-driven works. There is something said without words that floored me when Crane gets his leg shaved before his execution--because we remember that everynight he used to shave his wife's legs in the bathtub--like, how odd that on his last night alive someone else would be shaving his. There's no point. It's a mere observation. But, what else is there? These shots may support the motif that Doris' marriage proposal suggests ("Why? Does it get better?").

She has a point.

Maybe this is all there is.

Doris (Frances McDormand) is a riot as the comedic relief, and Crane is here merely to serve as her foil mostly. She's got the balls and spits fire like one of Hawks's gals. And what cracks me up is that religion or a higher power isn't a governing factor for Ed or Doris (or anyone else in this movie really) but, she kind of symbolizes everything the ten commandments try to dissuade. Doris cusses like a sailor, loves to use blasphemy, "Enjoy your goddamn cherries," is racist, "I hate wops," is an alcoholic, commits adultery, commits grand larceny against he employer, and finally is convicted of murder. The irony is that even though Doris didn't kill Big Ed, one wonders how long before she might have.

Her first line in the film is a riot, "Bingo!" I saw McDormand on a Charlie Rose interview from the time of the film's release and I remember she said some of the best direction she had was in that scene because Ethan told her, "when she gets bingo, it's life or death for her."

The casting in this film is brilliant. No one holds a candle to Tony Shaloub (as Freddy Riedenschneider). Riedenschnieider's machine-gun rapid-fire dialogue as a fast talking big money attorney from Sacramento takes the second half of this film into vastly entertaining dimensions. Everyone is a small town rube, but he kicks the cobwebs off of the mausoleum once he arrives. He talks fast, eats fast (and voraciously), and thinks fast. He's arrogant, rude, manipulative, and driven. His musings on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are ridiculously hilarious. Although my favorite Riedenscheider lines have always been his curt summary of how crummy Doris' case looks:

FREDDY

You say he was being blackmailed. By who?

You don't know. For having an affair. With

who? You don't know. Did anyone else know

about it? Probably not, you don't know.

Carter Burwell (he's scored every Coen Bros. movie) wrote one of the only scores in a Coen Brothers movie where I actually felt like they were being sentimental. The Burwell excerpt I'm talking about doesn't play until Act III, when Frank has to sell the barbershop over to the bank. And it is after this point I feel like the Coen Bros. have transcended most of the stuff they usually do, and why The Man Who Wasn't There is so important for me. (I wonder if Burwell's similarly heart-breaking score for Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze) was a breakthrough that paved the way for this?)

In closing, the haircuts for kids were:
The Butch
The Heine
The Flattop
The Ivy
The Junior Contour
(And occasionally) The Executive Contour

 --Dregs