So, "Long live Caesar!" Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2016. I have long been used to the style of the brothers, although it varies somewhat in different films, this film seemed to me close to two at once - "Serious Man" and "Barton Fink". Again, as in Barton Fink, they look back at the heyday of typical Hollywood cinema and again, as in Serious
more
So, "Long live Caesar!" Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2016. I have long been used to the style of the brothers, although it varies somewhat in different films, this film seemed to me close to two at once - "Serious Man" and "Barton Fink". Again, as in Barton Fink, they look back at the heyday of typical Hollywood cinema and again, as in Serious Man, they look at the question of faith in their own way, of course. Everything is filmed quite simply, fictional characters are combined with real ones, and the seriousness of the topic is greatly diluted by their inherent irony, so think for yourself how to treat this. The main character is a real-life Hollywood fixer Eddie Mannings (Josh Brolin), on behalf of whom the narrative is conducted, but he works, unlike the real one, at the Capitol film studio invented by the Coens (the name has already been used in Barton Fink), and it is he who resolves, and very successfully, all the problems that arise on the set of films, the main genres of which will be shown to us in the form of false scenes. Moreover, faith is a very important question for the hero himself, with his characteristic fixation on time, he daily rushes to the padre for confession, although his sins seem to us extremely insignificant - he lied to his wife about smoking cigarettes, for example, while promising her to quit smoking. That's how on the verge when a serious topic turns into its opposite, and everything happens in this movie. The famous Hollywood actor, who, like many of them, is subject to a known addiction to alcohol, because of which they do not immediately attach importance to his disappearance from the set right in the midst of filming a key scene, when the hero of the film - a Roman commander - turns to the Christian faith, finding himself before a man crucified on a cross (apparently Christ). And his abduction, it turns out, was organized by the very famous Hollywood ten writers-communists, so that the ransom received for his release was used to fight for justice, expressed, however, in the form of justice for the distribution of income from filming – they say, the writers receive only a small reward, while the owners of the studio live on huge income from the films. Having got to them, Whitlock (played by George Clooney) without thinking twice, turns to their “faith”, which then seeks to convey popularly to Mannings, but being sharply stopped by him with the help of sobering slaps, quickly retreats and goes to the set. Irony and a parody of Hollywood cliches here through almost all scenes, none of them are taken absolutely seriously. And interruptions in filming material like “The Divine Apparition Has Not Been Filmed” only highlight this more strongly. And the scene when the hero of Channing Tatum goes on a "Soviet" submarine to a beautiful Soviet country, escorted by a dozen of his communist like-minded people, is generally something, and at the same time the Red Army choir sounds, which is not perceived, at least by me, I do not know what the Western viewer will think about this as pure irony, it is painfully well sung. And it is especially beautiful when the hero, choosing between his dog named Engels and a suitcase with money, chooses a dog and boards a submarine with it. And the filmed last scene of the film conversion to Christianity, the commander is cut off at the most significant place - remembering the longest monologue, he forgets the simple word "faith". That’s the way it is in this movie, so you can decide if you’re going to watch it, and some people might find it boring, but I loved it.
|