Hollywood farce Hail, Caesar! is a masterstroke of screwball absurdism from the Coen brothers, as they return with the subgenre of technically impeccable yet thematically anarchic comedy they practically invented. Harkening back to their output in the 1990s, Hail, Caesar! is a satirical genre parody and period piece in the vein of The Hudsucker Proxy and The Big Lebowski. The film follows the chaos surrounding a kidnapping of movie star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) from the set of Capitol Pictures’ religious epic, Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ, by a secret “study group” of communist screenwriters. Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, a fictionalized version of a real-life executive and “fixer” for MGM of the same name, who must see to Whitlock’s return while continuing to juggle his everyday activities: parrying with gossip columnists, resolving disputes between actors and directors and the like.
Showbiz satires are a notoriously self-congratulatory game, full of inside-jokes and megastars patting themselves on the back for taking the lightest of jabs on the chin. Even at their best, they can feel like a slideshow of photos from a party you weren’t invited to, and rarely do they sink their teeth into the subject matter and really bite off a subject worth chewing. That’s not to say that Hail, Caesar! does, but it succeeds in accomplishing gags that don’t require the audience to be familiar with a narrow range of references or to have seen specific films. The Coens take many of the same ingredients that went into films such as The Player, Tropic Thunder and State and Main and reshuffle them to their own irreverent purposes with little to no consideration for anyone’s feelings.
This is, of course, how the Coens have always operated: with an utter lack of sentimentality. Although they never fully abandoned humor, the noted elasticity of their farces gave way to the more contemplative, emotionally loaded content of their recent output. For the past decade, they had been reaching new artistic heights while subjecting their characters to the darkest depths of nihilism and bleakness, even in their comedies. In reverse chronological order: Inside Llewyn Davis saw its title character, a talented 1960s folk singer with emotional baggage following the death of his partner, alternately reject or ruin anything good that happened to him, hitting rock bottom just as the genre was to be revolutionized by Bob Dylan. True Grit was very nearly a feel-good story that was also a reflection of the amoral anarchy of the Wild West and the uncaring brutality of nature. A Serious Man and Burn After Reading were both ostensibly comedies that depicted relentlessly bleak or cruel circumstances, while No Country for Old Men spared neither its characters nor its audience from the complete lack of justice or humanity in the universe.
What the Coens have brought us with Hail, Caesar! is a film that is proud of its artifice, unashamed of its staginess and obvious special effects; the whole thing is so absurd, the clear fakeness of its backgrounds only add to its charm. Even the more predictable gags land beautifully. You don’t even need to like classic films or understand dated political or academic references. Hail, Caesar! is easily the Coens’ best comedy since The Big Lebowski.
Playing this week
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213
The 5th Wave
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
The Boy
Brooklyn
The Choice
Daddy’s Home
Dirty Grandpa
Fifty Shades of Black
The Hateful Eight
Jane Got a Gun
Kung Fu Panda 3
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
Norm of the North
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Ride Along 2
Room
Where to Invade Next
Zoolander 2
Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000
45 Years
Animated Oscar Shorts 2016
Anomalisa
The Big Short
Deadpool
Documentary Oscar Shorts 2016
The Finest Hours
Hail, Caesar!
Live Action Oscar Shorts 2016
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
