First Frame, Big Picture: What's Going on in Hail, Caesar!

Spoiler Alert

So, technically I think I'm not revealing any specific plot developments that you'd like to be surprised by and experience on your own on a first viewing. It is written assuming you're already familiar with the characters and main storyline, though. But, if you prefer to work through the puzzle that Hail, Caesar! has offered you, then this entry kind of brings a lot of things to the forefront that don't really jump out at you on the first viewing. If you're able to catch it more than once and want to develop your own hypotheses, go ahead and do that first if you enjoy these puzzles. You can come back here and compare notes afterwards.

Disclaimer

Who knows if I'm right about any of this? My only criteria for success is if I can find support for the ideas coming directly from action and dialog found in the movie, and all I've got are my own notes and memory.

The Coens are well known for using a more intuitive than intellectualized approach to the choices they make about how to tell their stories. So, this all is still only an interpretation of what's happening on the screen. That's all it is, and not a claim about the existence of any grand philosophical design behind the construction of the story.

First Frame

Much has been said about the opening shot (not shown below) of a crucifix in the Catholic church where Mannix is confessing his perceived sins to a weary, bewildered priest. There is an immediate surface read that jumps at you when presented with this image as the first thing you see.

Your very first thoughts, on your very first exposure, will, of course, depend a lot on the cultural perspective you bring with you into the theater. Jewish, non-Christian, and  more secular viewers may see this and think something along the lines of: "What, again with the Christ imagery? Maybe we'll get lucky and can look forward to some satire, but I sure hope we're not in for another meta-passion and sacrifice trope. I suppose I better keep a watch out for the Christ figure.". If you're Christian, it might go something like: "A crucifix! Maybe we'll get lucky and find an insightful Christ figure, but I sure hope we're not in for a bunch of sneaky satire or ignorant misrepresentations of the church.".

So the first frame of the movie is already at work setting up your frame of mind for how you're going to interpret what follows, and that perspective is obviously going to be different for different viewers. But, for understanding the movie, it's helpful to consider how the first frame might represent the entire idea of the story in microcosm. A well chosen opening image or sequence does exactly this, and you fully expect the Coens to have put some thought into how to choose it.

What's the Story?

So, what exactly is cooked into an image of the crucifix? It of course evokes Jesus' story from the New Testament, and specifically the passion. Christian theology holds that Jesus isn't only human, but he is also God incarnate. This is the most obvious duality built into the crucifix image (for Christians, at least). One man with two seemingly irreconcilable natures, human and divine.

But there are other kinds of stories to be found packed into this image. We can find some by considering what the story of Jesus has meant to people from all walks of life, not just Christians. Multiple interpretations are available, of course, but in asking this question, we've already found the first intersection between the four questions motif and the image of the crucifix.

The Christian telling of Jesus' story is that it is describing a supernatural intervention on Earth - a very direct message from God (inhabiting the form of Jesus) to all of mankind about how to be in a relationship with God. It's a story telling about a very clear message from God to mankind.

Of course, this is not the Jewish interpretation, for example, which tells the story of Jesus as describing a man delivering a message of his own making to his contemporaries about how to be in a relationship with God. It's a muddled message about God from one man to mankind.

So, the crucifix also represents one story with (at least) two very different, irreconcilable, tellings or interpretations, and all four questions in play. With regard to the real-life story of Jesus, with humanity as the audience of this story:

1. We are in the role of Joe Schmoe
2. Who is giving us direction (God or man)?
3. Is the direction clear? If not, how do we get clarification?
4. Are we carrying out the direction correctly? Could we be doing a better job?

This notion of being given direction, a lack of clarity on the origin of the direction, a lack of clarity on the content or meaning of the direction, a struggle to determine how to act, and the question of whether there's a better role to play, is playing out in many, many scenes in Hail, Caesar!. All of it is efficiently represented in the first frame of the movie through a unique, and oblique, meaning imbued on the image of the crucifix.

Hail, Caesar! is not interested in the question of whether Christ is man or God, whether capitalism or communism is the source of all evil, or in telling you how you should act or what you should believe. But it is very interested in the question of how people find their way in life in the face of confusing and conflicting direction and how they come to understand the value of what they do.

This question is explored through the presentation of a number of what, on first viewing anyway, appear to be unrelated subplots or vignettes centered on the telling of a story of some kind. In each case, we do not have the full context of the story, but the range of stories and styles presented is broad, and each contains a contradiction or conflict with an "actor" in the center struggling to define themselves and their "role" in the "story". The variety of stories is another hint that Hail, Caesar! is telling a story about people from all walks of life, not just Eddie Mannix, and not just the movie making industry.

What unifies these disparate stories is a common one of people looking to find their role within the story they're helping to tell and make the best contribution they can.

Top-Down Revelation, or Bottom-Up Revolution?

This storytelling and role-playing framework is sufficient to set up all of the dramatic action found in the movie. A number of different stories are presented, but all of them relate back to a principal tension between the things of God and the things of Mankind, or Caesar.

Relating this back to the story of Jesus, in addition to its interpretation as a story about Mankind's relationship with God, many have interpreted the story of Jesus to also be telling them something about the things of Mankind, or how to run things here on Earth. This interpretation is, of course, another case of a message in the real world getting muddled in transmission, but it allows for a very clean and natural integration within the narrative of Hail, Caesar!, where the role of the communists is being pitted against the Hollywood machinery.

Capitol Pictures wants Baird Whitlock to play the lead role in their story of Jesus as a message from God on high down to the common man promising liberation and eternal life through faith in Christ.

The (Hollywood) communists want Baird to play a role in a plan they're wanting to execute from the lowly studio writers up through the machinery and power structures of Capitol Pictures to the common man that promises liberation from economic slavery through rational rejection of the contradictions of capitalism within the studio system.

Both are trying to tell stories to people through movies. Both are promising a kind of liberation through their stories. One is a message from God, the other a message from Man; the message from God within Hollywood flows from the studio heads down, the message from Man within Hollywood flows from the writers up. These two storytelling approaches form a duality, offering opposite kinds of liberation messages (spiritual vs economic) to "the little guy", and with opposite origins (God/Man, top-down/bottom-up). At the center of this decision about which role to play is Baird.

Unity in Division, Division in Unity, and the Dialectic

This God/Man capitalist/communist duality is directly underlined by two mirror dialog scenes that occur maybe 10-20 minutes or so apart. The first occurs in the scene where Mannix is having the nature of God explained to him by the Christian priests, and the second is the scene where Baird is having the nature of Man explained to him by Dr. Marcuse.

The two descriptions take the same form, of one thing being split into multiple manifestations. For God, these are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For Man, these are the various institutions: Hollywood, organized religion, and economic systems. For Hollywood, the functions of storytelling are also split among writers, directors, actors, editors, etc.

According to the communists, each of mankind's institutions expresses contradictions that must be worked through (in the dialectic) using objective, scientific, rational discussion. According to the church, mankind must have faith that all things will become clear. According to Hollywood, people just want to be titillated, they're not really interested in the truth.

It's because of the missing context, duality, and contradictions purposefully and artfully built into the narrative of the Coens' Hail, Caesar! that viewers will have an exceptionally hard time taking specific reads on the stories that Hail, Caesar! seems to be telling, exactly what roles the actors are playing in each of those stories, whether the story's any good (exciting or boring, funny or serious, high stakes or no stakes), whether the story is telling the truth or a lie. This is quite intentional within the framework of the movie.

If you think, for example, that the Coens are telling a meta-story about Jesus, with Mannix as the Christ figure, you'll find a number of elements that seem to support your case, but there will also be a number of contradictions that maybe you're shrugging off. Somebody else looking at the same movie as you, and listening to your hypothesis, will find those contradictions, point them out and insist that you've got it wrong.

This real-world discussion is a kind of search for the truth about a story you think you found in the movie. Did you agree on what the story was? What did you find out? Something that's both simple and complicated at the same time, and that you have to make up your own mind about the story in question. This is the essence of the dialectic. The nature of life. The process of storytelling.

Think you found a story in the movie originating from the Coens about sexuality? About marriage and fidelity? About Christianity? About Judaism? About economic slavery and oppression? About capitalism? About communism? About Hollywood? About class?  About race? About what makes a good story?

Formulate your hypothesis, and then follow it through all the related action in the movie. You'll have the same experience every time, and you'll find it's complicated, simple, hilarious, and magical all at the same time. This is another sense in which your interaction with the movie looks exactly like the stories depicted within the movie itself.

Merrily, We Dance

Just to make things more fun, these opposing God/Man forces in play between the studio and the communists are operating at the same time within the narrative of the movie, with their opposing efforts merging to form the stories that are going out to the common man in the movies released by Capitol Pictures. In every phase of production, the story that's going to go out is being influenced by writers, directors, actors, and producers. Is the story going to get through? Is there a chance that the story might get muddled? What, even, is the story at that point? And, how will it be interpreted?

Take a close look at the function of the movie-in-movie sequences: Neptune's Daughter or whatever the Mermaid picture is, Merrily We Dance, The Swingin' Dinghy, Lazy Ol' Moon, Hail, Caesar!. They are not only giving us some wonderful visual spectacles while at the same time feeding and developing subplots and highlighting the Hollywood duality of image versus reality.

We've all loved watching those sequences and marveled at their construction. But guess what? We're also getting exposed to communist content within each of them.