Hail, Caesar!

The Coen Brothers have by now directed over fifteen films together, bestowing upon the world such classics as Fargo, The Big Lebowski and the 2007 Oscar darling No Country for Old Men. Throughout the years, they have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres such as film noir, while simultaneously retaining their very own brand of dark humour, a knack for suspenseful satire and a feel for detached irony (of the postmodern kind). Their frequent collaborators include some of the most astonishing talent in contemporary Hollywood including cinematographer Roger Deakins, composer Carter Burwell, Oscar-winning actors Frances McDormand, George Clooney, J.K. Simmons and many, many others. When we go to the movies to see a Coen Brothers film, we know we are about to enter a world inhabited with quirky characters who find themselves in bizarre situations, in the same way in which we would once go to a Hitchcock film expecting it to be entirely his own, unique creation. The Coens have become a brand name, much like the fictional movie studio Capitol Pictures that the characters of their new film orbit around.

And so it is with Hail, Caesar! that we are taken on a buggy ride, metaphorically speaking, around a beautifully shot film studio of 1950s Hollywood and its sets, where several vignettes about showbiz folks intertwine. The character who serves as glue bringing these stories together is a studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) whose job is to keep everyone’s scandals out of the press. The press here is played by Tilda Swinton in dual roles of rival twin sisters /gossip columnists named Thora and Thessaly Thacker. These two have the amazing ability to appear out of nowhere as they suspect that the studio’s biggest star Baird Whitlock (Clooney) has mysteriously disappeared from the set in the middle of shooting a new Rome-set epic Hail, Caesar!. Working on his own investigation of this case is a western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehnrehreich, brilliantly playing an amalgam of James Dean and John Wayne), a Gene Kelly-type studio asset by the name of Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), a synchronised swimming actress DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and an old school English director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes).

What Hail, Caesar! does right, and there are many compliments we can throw its way, are all the movie references and in-jokes about the studio system of the time and movie making en général. For instance, the Hobie Doyle cowboy character is obligated to go on a date with a Carmen Miranda-type actress, who he had never met before, solely because the studio demands it. Somehow, the two stars end up enjoying themselves from the get-go as if contractual dating is the most natural thing in the world. In another scene, the Coens subvert the beautiful imagery of a Busby Berkely-style mermaid choreography by having the goddess-like DeeAnna suddenly throw her crown and swim out of the pool, only to later explain in a strong Brooklyn accent that she is suffering from gas brought on by pregnancy - one that also turns out to be out of wedlock. At its best, Hail, Caesar! is a witty deconstruction of Hollywood, its insights are more or less entertaining throughout. However, as the Coen brothers and their postmodern creations reach a point of wrapping up, we realise that the pieces of the puzzle have failed to come together in any real meaningful way. There’s Hail, but no Caesar.

7/10

The Revenant

The Revenant is the first film by Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) following his hugely successful Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) that, as unconventional as it was, still managed to snatch Best Picture and three other golden statuettes at the last year’s Academy Awards. It sees Iñárritu reunited with Birdman’s genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (also behind the recent cinematic marvel Gravity) to deliver yet another Oscar-calibre picture with the same tour de force commitment to storytelling and visual brilliance, albeit one that is nowhere near as light on its feet (or its running time) as Birdman was.

The story, loosely based on real events, is set in 1823. A group of hunters and fur trappers seeking pelt in the snow-covered wilderness of Montana and South Dakota get ambushed by a tribe of Native Americans called Arikara. The hunting party (or, rather, what’s left of it) manages to escape the attack on one of their rafts led by captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) who is relying heavily on the navigational skills of a more experienced hunter by the name of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his half-caste son.

Scouting ahead of the group in the depths of an icy forest, Glass comes across a grizzly bear and to say he gets badly mauled is an understatement. He somehow manages to kill the bear and is found barely alive by the hunting party who carry him along even though he is slowing them down and the Arikara are nearing. As it is in life, some people are far more dangerous than bears and soon Glass and his son are ruthlessly sabotaged by the one criminal member of the group called John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). 

On a surface level, The Revenant a survival story in the vein of 12 Years a Slave, Apocalypto and Cast Away. That we are engrossed in for the full 156 minutes of it is a testament to the level of commitment and bravery with which Iñárritu and Lubezki approached the material, shooting in far-away locations, in actual frozen rivers, using natural lighting alone, highly elaborate camera movements and long takes that should make at least one quarter of the audience thinking “How did they do that?!” It is without a doubt one of the most visually breathtaking films of the year.

However, there is food for thought that comes with the harrowing narrative – the love of family, the human perseverance, the power of nature, camaraderie, the extent to which we go to revenge someone’s wrongful death, and, in the more poetic segments of the film - the sheer experience of existing on this planet. Like many great films, The Revenant is movie about what it is to be human. Which brings us to Leonardo DiCaprio. The actor is more raw here than you have seen him in years, giving an extremely physical performance with only a handful of lines of dialogue and conveying so much of Glass’ anguish and determination through his eyes alone.

It is impossible to talk about DiCaprio or the film as whole without going into speculation about the upcoming Academy Awards and, even in a year as fruitful as 2015 was, The Revenant will surely get attention in many categories including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Cinematography. Yet, a much more exciting question is where will the creative mind of Alejandro González Iñárritu take us next?

After an outing as rough and as masculine as this, a female-centred story would be most welcome.

10/10

The Family Fang

Dubai International Film Festival DIFF 2015 Official Selection

(still of Bateman and Kidman in The Family Fang)

The Family Fang is an upcoming adaptation of the 2011 bestselling novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson. The story revolves around two siblings Buster and Annie Fang, a writer and actress respectively, who are attempting to lead normal lives despite the oddball pair of performance artists they have as their parents called Caleb and Camille.

The siblings, played by Jason Bateman (Arrested Development, Horrible Bosses) and Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole, Paddington) have been referred to Child A and Child B their entire lives. As kids, they have been forced by Caleb and Camille to stage robberies, use fake blood, perform a song called “Kill All Parents” in public and even kiss each other as Romeo and Juliette in a school play sending their teacher to early retirement. We get to see all of the said performance pieces (and more) in well-placed flashbacks.

As adults, Buster has a writer’s blockage and Annie is stuck in indie film making hell. They are criticised by Caleb and Camille as lesser artists now than they were as part of the Fang assembly (“Crap movies and a tampon commercial!” is all Caleb has to say of his daughter’s career) and still get occasionally drawn into their oddball art.

Things get further complicated when the parents, played in the present day by the great Christopher Walken (Seven Psychopaths, Hairspray) and Tony Award winning actress Maryann Plunkett, decide to pull one of their most elaborate and ludicrous performance pieces yet. If this part sounds too good to be true, it’s only because it is.

The Fangs are a celebrity family much like we might have had if Marina Abramovic and her ex-partner Ulay had ever decided to have children and use them as props. The script by Pulitzer Prize winning screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Shrek the Musical) is, like the novel, at its best when it focuses on the crazy shenanigans of the senior Fangs. Performance art is still relatively new, not really a part of pop culture just yet, and The Family Fang takes a particular delight in being a bit of a cinematic pioneer in that regard. It’s also extremely hard to imagine anyone else playing these roles as good as Walken and Plunkett do.

But as we get to the newest Fang performance, the film begins to drag. The big art piece (or is it?) of Caleb and Camille takes them both out of the film for long stretches of time leaving Buster and Annie to provide us with all the entertainment. Bateman does a good job with his more fragile character and along with this year’s The Gift he has proved himself to be quite the force of nature, but his writer’s blockage is simply boring. The circumstances of Kidman’s character’s life are perhaps more original but they are vaguely presented and the actress has a hard time selling the character who is clearly supposed to be much younger than she is.

So, we are left with the siblings sitting in dark rooms, moping around the house, doing research and arguing about what is the best course of action. It begins to feel like something more appropriate for cable TV, which probably explains why the film has been picked up for distribution by no one other than STARZ premium cable. It also doesn’t help that Bateman, who serves here as a director following his 2013 debut Bad Words, has yet to acquire a particular style and, together with his cinematographer Ken Seng, makes the story look far gloomier and drearier on screen than it really needed to be.

This family deserved better.

6.5/10