I revised the angle of my interpretation and revised the blog entry to match it. I'm now seeing the movie being more about the nature of storytelling, and its intersection with real life.
Stories have an author with the story they want to tell, but in the process of transmission the content of the story gets changed. In the case of books, you have editors, publishers, interpreters and printers. For movies, you have producers, writers, directors, and actors.
Religious and philosophical ideas have a more ambiguous author, but they depend on priests and professors to communicate them to the public.
In a business, somebody has an idea about a product they want to make, but there are managers, middle managers, hiring managers, and low level workers between the product that you want to make and the product that ultimately gets produced.
All three have audiences, or markets. And in all three cases, the audience will receive the result and interpret or use it in a probably completely different way than the 'author' intended.
In all three you find people jockeying for a better position, trying to find a more important role, being put forward as a leader, the source of truth or quality.
And in all three there is the question of whether they are producing this thing for the good of humanity, to tell a truth, or a lie, or simply entertain, or if they're doing it to make money.
And, there isn't even a clear line between these three "producers". For example, businesses have to tell stories about their product to their markets (advertising), and it has to be a good one. Storytellers have to come up with something that can find a market and make the publishers or Hollywood money. Religious leaders and philosophers have to make their idea or story clear so it can be understood, and they need to make money in order to continue to operate.
And in all three there is the question of what the audience or market wants. The audience is trying to find out what they've been given, they evaluate and criticize it, whether it's good or true, or whether there's a better product, religion, ideology, story, or movie out there.
In Hail, Caesar! I think we are seeing a depiction of this, the human condition, and for me, it's firing on all cylinders in all aspects. Just amazing. The greatest story ever told, told in a great way, and finding all kinds of audiences that love it or hate it in all kinds of ways for both predictable and unpredictable reasons.
Updated blog entry here: http://mr-persnickety.blogspot.com/2016/02/first-frame-landscape-of-dramatic.html
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mr-simon-strange
9 years ago
Ooh - delicious! Instead of "storytelling" - you could math contemporary philosophers and call that "the expression (or manifestation) of an internal concept." - which was something Wittgenstein really focused much of his later writings on.
A key part of that concept, which the movie explores in depth, is about us expressing ideas TO OURSELVES as well as expressing them to others. That's a lot of the duality.
Baird is a great manifestation of this - and it's all tied up in the things that make him a bit of a frustrating character to watch. He's a total blank slate - an actor - just reflecting ideas but at the same time giving them weight, authority, and gravitas. He's great at expressing any idea - because he doesn't hold any of them in his own head. Be this centurion - bam. He's doing a great job of it. Proselytize Communism to the masses? He's ready in a moment! For get all that and get back to work? Done!
And yet this empty vessel - this loudspeaker for other people's ideas - is widely respected. His greatness instantly unifies the religious leaders, for example. And that's because he's not only expressing these ideas outward - he's expressing them inward. He believes.
Someone asked why Baird bumbles his sword when sitting down - over and over. I think that happens to remind us (the audience) that he's not changing out of his centurion's outfit. He won't even take off a prop sword without explicitly being told to do so - he's there to take direction!
Contrast that with Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) - he's always expressing one idea while holding another inside. (The "we won't see a dame"/homo-erotic first scene, betraying his country for "the cause"/dropping the money for his dog)
Burt doesn't convince anyone of anything, because his self-deception gets in the way.
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mrireillyu
9 years ago
There's another bit of genius going on with Baird and the depiction of him as going whichever way the wind blows. It is not so easy to pick up, but it is right there in the dialog as plain as day.
Baird is bisexual. He swings both ways. He can play for either team.
This information is buried in the little story he's telling to the communists as he walks out of the study group room where they were explaining the nature of man to him.
As he walks out together with the communists, he's telling a story about waking up in the morning after some kind of party, and he's with Clark Gable, who says "well, her keys weren't there, so I guess we're walkin'!", followed by "that was before Gable was Gable".
This is made clear by the similarity between the nature of this story and all the other stories in the movie about him waking up in rooms after parties with women, and by the rhyme between the phrase "that was before Gable was Gable" and the more common phrase "that was before Gay was Gay".
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lippertokes
9 years ago
"Someone asked why Baird bumbles his sword when sitting down - over and over. I think that happens to remind us (the audience) that he's not changing out of his centurion's outfit. He won't even take off a prop sword without explicitly being told to do so - he's there to take direction!"
Another possibility may be that the sword, as obvious phallic symbol, represents Baird's potency (or lack of?), not as a man, but as ideological influence because of his fame and position. He bangs it when he sits down as both showing that he doesn't know what to do with it, and that it is in a symbolic flaccid state, and thus he has nothing to say (or as Marxists would put it, he is suffering false consciousness). The irony of the scene of course is that he is the supposed captured person, but yet he is the one who has the sword and is symbolically dressed in a position of power. But when Hobbe comes in to 'rescue' him (the loner capitalist cowboy) Baird is laying horizontal, thus returned to the symbolic state of when he first woke up in the house after being drugged, the point being that he has learned nothing, and all that talk by the communists literally put him to sleep.
Another irony I saw was that the speech about equality of men Baird gave to Mannix (written by communist screenwriters and spoken like he learned his lines correctly) which earns him a slap, is pretty much exactly the same speech with different words (written by communist screenwriters?) that will earn him praise* in the sandal film (its funny how catholics often overlook the Marxist lessons of Christ, something filmmaker Pasolini made explicit) It shows the ideology of equality only really exists in fantasy form in movies in America, while the real ideology of playing your role in the capitalist system is what the authorities really want. In other words, its fine to say these things in a movie because they are just fantasy, but don't say them in real life where they may have an impact.
* Is this a comment by the Coens about the irony of how Dalton Trumbo who was blacklisted for being a communist but yet was celebrated for writing a 'communist' script like Spartacus?
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The_Mahatma_Fonzie
9 years ago
Another irony I saw was that the speech about equality of men Baird gave to Mannix (written by communist screenwriters and spoken like he learned his lines correctly) which earns him a slap, is pretty much exactly the same speech with different words (written by communist screenwriters?) that will earn him praise* in the sandal film (its funny how catholics often overlook the Marxist lessons of Christ, something filmmaker Pasolini made explicit) It shows the ideology of equality only really exists in fantasy form in movies in America, while the real ideology of playing your role in the capitalist system is what the authorities really want. In other words, its fine to say these things in a movie because they are just fantasy, but don't say them in real life where they may have an impact.
Didn't catch this. Hilarious.
My smile is stuck, I cannot go back to your frownland.
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sussman8454473
8 years ago
Someone asked why Baird bumbles his sword when sitting down - over and over. I think that happens to remind us (the audience) that he's not changing out of his centurion's outfit. He won't even take off a prop sword without explicitly being told to do so - he's there to take direction!
That Baird doesn't change out of his Roman costume, also fits a possible Latin language game present in the Communists' beach house: there is quite a number of horses (in pictures & as sculptures), horse = equus -> aequus = equal. Equality, something Communism is especially concerned about, and an idea also appearing in Baird's speech at the feet of the penitent thief: "This man was giving water to all. He saw no Roman, he saw no slave, he saw only men, weak men, and gave succor."
Then again, Burt Gurney just may like horses. ;)
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