When I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December I also saw the trailer for Hail, Caesar! and remember thinking that this could be one of the Coen Brothers’ best films. That first trailer portrays so many different movie genres, and something about the title screamed classic to me. I pictured future electronic textbooks saying, “The Coen Brothers dominated story telling with their chameleon-like tastes, but once they released Hail, Caesar!, the world simultaneously bowed down in awe of their skills.”
Well, I can’t say I’m not still bowing down to the duo, but at the same time I have no idea what I just watched. The entire film seemed to have been made just to make fun of itself and the film industry. It was like watching a well-produced Adult Swim movie. But it’s elusive point can be summed up in one of the beginning scenes, where producer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) asks men of multiple faiths whether the movie he’s creating, Hail, Caesar!, will offend anyone religiously. Instantly, one of the men states that a scene in the film where one person jumps from one chariot to the other is not realistic, which leads to the men arguing over who or what God is, and whether Jesus was the son of God. No resolution to Eddie’s question is given, and that’s the point.
Stars such as Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum give us truly impressive introductions to their fictional movie star characters as they dance and swim on fake sound stages. But after that they disappear from the plot entirely, only to be given extremely outlandish conclusions at the end of the film that we the audience just have to accept actually happened. There’s not a solid plot to the entire story, and it’s all in the name of the Christian film that Eddie Mannix is producing with the clueless actor Baird Whitlock, played with ease as always by George Clooney. It’s Just so comical to watch though, because every character seems to have no idea how anything truly works, and yet the point of Eddie’s film is to try and explain who runs the universe to the masses.
But I doubt that this movie will offend people religiously, because the Coen Brothers are literally telling us that films shouldn’t try explaining religion, by simply giving us the story of the incompetent filmmakers who try.
The reason I really enjoyed this film was because I left the theater with a better understanding about society that has illuminated aspects of spirituality for me more than any religious film I’ve seen before. This is also why I love the Coen brothers. Their “point” is elusive, but it still exists. Overall it’s a fun ride of a film, but if you have absolutely no idea what happens behind and around the camera in order to make a movie, some of the key jokes will go right over your head. It wasn’t the classic that I thought it would be, but as long as you don’t take anything in this film seriously, (seriously anything), you will enjoy Hail, Caesar!.