Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

COEN BROTHERS – CLOONEY – HAIL CAESAR – 2016

A small film that makes fun of Hollywood and the modern world, though it speaks of the old times. Some scenes are funny though altogether this humor is slightly warped.

The western cowboy actor is funny and the scene of “Lazy Ol’ Moon” is hilarious. And the song is so sad and nostalgic. He sounds like my Swedish friend City Cowboy singing Peter Pan (https://myspace.com/city-cowboy/music/songs) : nostalgia of the good old days when we were young, children, toddlers.

The kidnapping or abduction of the Roman legionnaire (Clooney) by some communists and his instant Stockholm syndrome is funny and the treatment of this PTSS by his boss at the studio is even more than funny since he is treated like a child with four slaps across the face. Which does not make him lose his Latin, but definitely makes him lose his faith.

The deeply superficial discussion of Jesus by four people, a rabbi, a Catholic priest, an Orthodox patriarch and what is going to be assumed to be a simple Protestant Joe Blow is absurd but so cut off from reality and from the real question about Jesus that we feel we have been dumped in some loony-bin. I just wonder why the children of Ismail, Abraham’s first son, in other words the Arabs, in other words the Muslims have not been included. Or is that not kosher enough for the Coen Brothers?

The sudden conversion of the Roman Legionnaire to Christianity, though the actor has just been boxed over the ears by his boss and told to please do the only thing he is paid for, be a star, would have been convincing, nearly convincing, at best hypocritical, if he had not lost his faith. You see god exists and he is looking after us and the dumb things we may be doing or saying.

The Soviet submarine in Malibu is so unreal and all that happens then is so absurd that we wonder if the Coen brothers are laughing at the Russians, hence Putin, or the West, hence NATO and the USA. One thing is sure the red danger is quite a farce and the only danger we are running into is just forgotten. It is true Jesus dies at the 9^th hour and he is buried at the 11^th hour. Are the Coen brothers making fun of our fear in aftermath of 9/11 though we use 911 at any moment in the daytime and at night for any little trivial family affair or marital disagreement.

The Russian songs used in the film though are of course the Red Army’s rendition of them, and I loved Kalinka that I taught in Russian to my French students and to my colleague’s Spanish students in Dunn, North Carolina, in 1970. The Americans have always loved those popular and traditional Russian songs and the Red Army here is probably the only real, realistic and true note (for music it is the good word) in the film. Let’s say authentic.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU