Consistent in Its Message

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2016)

This review is intended to help those who feel they didn't understand the film, so here are some things to pay attention to when trying to understand Hail, Caesar.
First, deliberately or not (and I suspect the former), Hail Caesar operates on many symbolic levels. The primary motif of the film is division and unity. (And division/unity should be treated as a plural, the attempt here seems to do away with that plurality.) The title is divided by a comma, and yet it's one title. That's just first base. Here's a random assortment of divisions and unities I noticed:
Man is split, as defined by the communists. And in pursuit of his own financial gain, he increases the dialectic, i.e., the split, the opposing forces. God is split, between Jesus (son) and God. The same God is split yet again, between Christian and Jewish belief. The main character, Eddie, is split between two theaters: the theater of war (as offered by a job with Lockheed) and the theater of Capitol. Capital/capitol itself is split as a homophone. The two major superpowers, US and Russia are split between their respective ideologies: communism and capitalism. The means of production is criticized as being parasitic and lazy, when in fact we watch the main character toiling endlessly. He, though not the studio machines themselves, is a means of production. That is, without his efforts, there would be no progress. So, his function is mechanical though he is not a machine. Each studio is a community unto itself: all workers' combined efforts produce the product. This is the unification of capitalism and community (i.e., communism). God is united as Son and Father. Theater is united as both definitions mentioned above. The pregnant mermaid when pursuing to separate (split) from her child is instead united with her child by an unexpected marriage to the professional "person." Lawrence Laurentz is a perfect duality of both unity of name and division, i.e., each name is pronounced differently, which troubles the simple cowboy, who himself, later, proves to be the wisest and eventual confidant of the manager by correctly identifying who the kidnappers may have been: the extras. Not such a simpleton after all. The communists need cash. Though they outwardly resist appearing slave to cash, when it is lost in the ocean all of them whimper a bit as the $100,000 sinks pointlessly to the bottom of the sea. Outwardly they deny needing it and maintain stoic, detached appearances; inwardly they suffer loss as it sinks. At the feet of the Christ, the Roman soldier is made equal with the slaves whom he had just shouldered aside, commanding "Romans before Slaves!" He is thus separate but equal. When the final climactic speech is delivered and the take is ruined by the forgotten word "faith," the remembrance of which becomes a moment of private realization, though up to that moment, the delivery of the lines was a public moment of unity as the stage personnel one by one begin to pay attention to his impassioned delivery. We watch him digest the import, we see him moved deeply, only to cavort back into superficiality and separation from the action, for after all he is just an actor. Who can miss the halved statue of man, larger than life, split at the center, idle in the studio yard? Even the journalists are divided yet are the same. Each panders to a enquiring readership who thirst for studio gossip, though each regards herself as unique and unlike her rival. They are the same and they are not. The film editor clearly would not like to choke herself, though her scarf nearly does. It takes reverse, the opposite of forward, to free her. And as soon as she is free, she fills her lungs with cigarette smoke. She doesn't want to choke; she chokes on smokes: her oxygen supply is reduced either way. The villainous, communist writers are gentle, polite and tame. The number of unity of contradictions seems endless. Would that it were so simple; it's complicated.