Hail, Caesar! (2016) feels both enamoured with and contemptuous of post-war ’50s Hollywood, revelling in the sleaze and skulduggery behind the charade as a nostalgia piece, whilst also informing us that it’s still how the edifice operates.
Eddie Mannix is flatteringly portrayed by Josh Brolin as a reluctant fixer plagued by Catholic guilt, but it works because of the sharks swimming around him. Brolin excels at these roles, capturing just the right combination of the smarmy and the sentimental. It’s a loose telling of events, as anything deeper would result in a murkier film.
As a pure comedy, it’s very funny. And every Hobie Doyle scene is hilarious. A snippet:
A time machine quality swirls around this flick. Whether it’s the throwback cinematography that apes Gregg Toland or the peculiar sound recording that could be lifted straight from the seminal Citizen Kane (1941) or merely the endlessly fascinating subject matter – Kane’s production history, its bonkers cast and crew. The movie was a joy to watch. It captures ‘Old Hollywood’ like no other; not that I was there, but it’s how I’ve always pictured the era. The sleaze, the smoky rooms, the shameless greed, the debauchery, the magnates and barons mixing with screenwriters and journalists, a glorious melting pot with movies the rarefied outcome.
It’s not just a portrait of an untouchable epoch, though. The … tribute is married to actual human stories, the individual struggles that inspire and spark creative output, the roman-à-clefs that writers as omniscient as Herman J. Mankiewicz soaked up like a sponge. When you read into types like this – Ben Hecht also comes to mind – you can’t help but admire the way they dipped into Bohemian Grove.
This might also be the most unusual movie David Fincher has made. I will have to view it again for I did not detect any ‘Fincherisms’.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 