A look back at Berlinale opening with Hail Caesar

BERLIN 66 opened rousingly on Thursday, February 11 with multiple screenings of the new Coen Bros. Hollywood send-up "Hail Caesar

By Alex Deleon, <filmfestivals.com>, 

Caesar Photo call, L-R: Swinton. Clooney, Alden Eirenreich, Josh Brolin, and Tatum Channing

Berlin 66 opened rousingly on Thursday, February 11 with multiple screenings of the new Coen Bros. Hollywood send-up "Hail Caesar" and a turn away overflow press conference crowd for the Jury led by Meryl Streep which was an event in itself. Day one, one might say, was all about  Streep, the Coen Brothers and actor George Clooney in his best jesting form and looking great in a slick black leather jacket at the Hail Caesar press conference table.

First off, a few words about the film. Manohla Dargis, in her sparkling NY Times review hit the nail squarely on the head when she called the film an "off center comedy" ~ as off center (flip-floppily structured) as it gets with chuckles and belly laughs all the way. To put it mildly, this in not the Co' Brothers most profound film, but it is arguably their funniest ever with a string of brilliant off-beat pearls by actors all of whom shine in their contrary off-the-wall castings.  Basically this is a affectionate spoof of fifties Hollywood but much more than that, loaded with absurd humor of the kind that harks back to the Marx Brothers era.

A list if the actors and their roles basically tells the story, what there is of it:  Jeff Brolin, tremendous as the blustering bigger than life studio fixer draped in a double breasted suit and topped with a bulky fedora, who regularly unloads his guilt in the catholic confessional box;

Clooney as a clueless movie star who gets kidnapped by the Communists  and walks around through the whole picture clad in his clanky starring role Julius Caesar paraphernalia, down to leather sandals with protruding toes artfully dumbelling it as he rarely does,

Scarlet Johansson in a grotesque sinful take on Fifties simon-pure MGM superstar bathing beauty, Ester Williams! -- uglified (sic) under the Coen brothers baton... The one part that didn't grab me because I loved The real Ester Williams. Scarlet is actually grotesque in this section.

 Channing Tatum leading a bunch of sailors in white in a sly slightly homoerotic take on a Gene Kelly MGM dance number -- to me, the highlight of the picture with surprisingly adept tap dancing, jumping from table to table -- this section had me stomping along to the beat in my seat -- 

New face Alden Ehrenreich as a hilarilious acrobatic Roy Rogers ripoff whistling to his white horse then doing handstands in the saddle pursued by the bad guys -- and performing incredible rope magic, even with a strand of  spaghetti in a restaurant for his girlriend --but  this is only Half of cowboy star "Hobie Doyle's comedic turn -- He is next engaged to fill in for an ailing actor in a drawing room drama exchanging ten gallon cowboy headgear for a tux and Bow tie, and called upon to mouth a clip of sophisticated dialogue which is like a foreign tongue to him -- the extended scene where his English director (Ralph Fiennes) patiently re-shoots his flubbed entry scene over and over painfully correcting  the perplexed actor's stumbling delivery of his single line -- (t'were as though...) -- is a real rib tickler.

Another highlight  in this linkup of comical skits strung together by the ridiculous premise of Caesar discovering God on his knees at the foot of Jesus on the cross --the whole "Hail Caesar" business being a kind of takeoff  on early fifties religious extravaganzas such as "The Robe" -- A satire of all-powerful Hollywood Gossip columnists who could make or break careers -- such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, both played sniffingly by Tilda Swinton as twin sisters ~~ All in all a hilarious piece of extra savvy entertainment and a glorious procession of contemporary stars revealing unexpected comedic chops -- 

Well, okay, it did get to be a bit much by the end, but a very good time was had by me -- if not by All -- of the serious minded film critics and international press people around me. 

As far as I could tell from my front and center first row seat,  I was the only one in the entire audience to burst out laughing or constantly snickering throughout the proceedings. I'll just hafta see it again with a native American audience to appreciate the collective cackle noticeably absent at this ultra-sober festival screening.

The crammed over flow press conference after the screening was almost equally comical. One Polish gal addressed a long long long question to Gorgeous George, who finally replied: "Are you flirting with me? ~ it won't work because I'm a married man now!" ~  which brought a roar of glee from the house. Most questions were, in fact, addressed to Clooney, who between sly quips that brought smiles from his colleagues at the table, finally summed it all up by saying that it was a privilege to work with such talented directors as the Coens, and above all -- FUN all the way.