Hail Caesar!

Film Review

By Caroline Colebrook

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Writers: Joel Coen , Ethan Coen.

Stars: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum, Hail, Caesar!

106 minutes

HAIL CAESAR! is a great comedy film for lefties and film buffs alike, set in a giant Hollywood film studio in the early 1950s. It follows a day in the life of the studio problem fixer, Eddie Mannix (played by Josh Brolin). He is clearly a man under serious stress, concerned over whether the studio’s biblical sword-and-sandals epic, [Hail Caesar!] and its restrained portrayal of the “Supreme being” is going to upset any religious community, he consults with Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Greek Orthodox leaders.

The studio’s glamorous swimming star, DeeAnna Moran, played by Scarlett Johannson, is having problems fitting into her mermaid costume as her pregnancy advances. Mannix must find a way of enabling her to adopt her own baby so that the film-going public will never realise she is not a virgin.

And he has to appease film director Laurence Laurentz (could be either Noel Coward or Laurence Olivier), played by Ralph Fiennes, when the studio boss insists the lead role in a literary drama, Merrily we Dance is given to Hobie Doyle, played by Alden Ehrenreich. He is the star of cowboy films, could be Roy Rogers or Gene Autrey – great at performing tricks on the back of a horse or with a lasso but, as Laurence Laurentz puts it: “A dust actor; the man barely knows how to talk.”

And all the time Mannix has to ward off twin rival gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker, both played by Tilda Swinton.

Meanwhile Mannix is being tempted to quit tinsel town and go to work for Lockheed, the armaments company that was then testing H-bombs on Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.

Mannix’s problems multiply when his lead actor in Hail Caesar!, Baird Whitlock played by George Clooney, is drugged and abducted by a strange group who call themselves “The Future” and are demanding a ransom.

The action goes lightly from one studio set to another and we see cowboy horse riding and rope tricks as well as great well-choreographed song-and-dance sets from a synchronised swimming water ballet to a bar-room full of American sailors about to set sail for the South Pacific (and the Bikini Atoll?).

The film is full of subtle and not-so-subtle references to classic Hollywood films and some cleverly crafted political jokes. To go into more detail would spoil it for viewers. Just have confidence in the writers. Even so, it is probably worth seeing more than once to make sure you catch all the jokes and nuances.

The Propaganda Game

Review

The Propaganda Game (2015)

98 minutes
Classification: 15

by Dermot Hudson

 

Spanish director and actor Álvaro Longoria has won critical acclaim for films about Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara  over the years. Last year he set out to investigate and explore the theme of the propaganda war against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). This film is a result of his visit to the DPRK arranged by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) and the DPRK Committee For Cultural Relations.

  The primary strength of the film is that the fascinating footage of the DPRK, showing the carefree lives of working people in the DPRK and the fact that Alejandro Cao de Benos, the founder  and President of the KFA, plus officials of the DPRK Cultural Relations Committee and ordinary working people are able to put the case for the DPRK. They are able to point out that housing is free of charge and that the people of the DPRK do not pay taxes.

Some of the Koreans interviewed expressed surprise and dismay at some of the lies being peddled about the DPRK, such as the story about laws about hairstyles!

  Unfortunately, probably as a concession to capitalist commercial interests, the film does include some anti-DPRK material from various 'defectors' and so-called experts on the DPRK including Andrei Lankov, a Russian “liberal” academic who is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University in Seoul, the capital of the puppet south Korean regime, along with some prominent members of the so-called “human rights” gang.

            The audience is also treated to theatrical and plastic celebrity defector Yeomi Park, who also appears in the film. The DPRK has made a documentary exposing this unsavoury young lady and her background. Others have also taken apart her story.

  “Seeing is believing” as Koreans say and basically the reality of the DPRK disproved these ill-minded and hired slanderers. We saw Korean people at work and at play, relaxing or at wedding ceremonies. Longoria said that he saw no evidence of the black market capitalist economy that some so-called experts claim exists. Longoria, though, is clearly neither a socialist nor a communist because he seemed to be puzzled by how the DPRK's construction boom is funded. “Where is the money coming from?” he asked twice. Well we can tell him that is socialist planning, socialist ownership and  Juché that provides the wherewithal for all the construction.

  Regrettably and bizarrely Longoria appears to doubt that the Catholic church in Pyongyang is genuine and he also has a one-sided take on reunification, seeing it only as meaning south Korea absorbing the DPRK. He appeared to be totally ignorant of the DPRK proposals for a Confederal Republic and the inter-Korean agreements of 2000 and 2007. The possibility of the south Korean people rising up in a revolution against the puppet regime and reunifying with their brothers and sisters in the north also appears to have escaped his mind.

            Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings the DPRK and the KFA in the form of Alejandro Cao de Benos shine through in the film. The film contains a rare interview with Alejandro's parents for the first time. The no-nonsense, straight talking style of Alejandro in defending the DPRK is impressive. Some so-called friends of the DPRK have often shied away from such a robust defence of the DPRK but Alejandro was there in the film defending the DPRK, hammering the lies.

            If you are prepared to stomach some extreme anti-DPRK material and take some things with a pinch of salt then this is a very good film to watch. It is on a very limited UK release now.

Don't Panic!

Review

Dad’s Army (2016)

By Dermot Hudson

Director: Oliver Hudson; DJ Films; 1 hour 40 mins; PG; General release

There has been a big fanfare over the remake of the famous comedy Dad’s Army with an all-star cast including Catherine Zeta Jones and Bill Nighy, as well cameo roles from surviving members of the original cast, namely Ian Lavender and Frank Williams as the Vicar.

Dads Army was a comedy about the Home Guard of the Second World War, which was originally called the Local Defence Volunteers. They were usually composed of men too old for active military service, hence the title Dad’s Army. The original series ran for about eight years and had its own spin off film version as well as a BBC Radio Four series. Much of the comedy centred on the pomposity of the local Home Guard commander Captain Mainwaring and the incompetence of the local guard Home Guard. The series give rise to many popular catchphrases such as “Don’t Panic!” and “You Stupid Boy”.

However despite the all-star cast and being talked up by the media the film turned out to be not as good as the original. Toby Jones as Captain Mainwaring lacked the presence of Arthur Lowe who played the part in the original series. The modern Mainwaring lacked the pomposity of the earlier one and was not as funny. Similarly Bill Nighy, stepping into the shoes of John Le Mesurier, was not quite right in the part of Wilson.

Many of the original characters were either downgraded in their roles or totally absent. ARP Warden Hodges (in the original series this part was played by Bill Pertwee), who was the perpetual rival of Mainwaring, deriding him as “Napoleon”, had only a few lines, as did the Vicar. The Verger, who was the assistant to the Vicar and accomplice of ARP Warden Hodges, was absent from the film, as was the upper-class Captain Square of the Eastgate Home Guard platoon.

The real star of film appeared to be Catherine Zeta Jones as a German spy, ”Agent Cobra”, who masquerades as a female journalist and tries to use her seductive charms to ferret out secrets – something that would have been considered too risqué in the original series.

The motivations of Ms Zeta Jones’s character were never made clear. Why did an Oxford graduate end up in German intelligence? Was she meant to be a Mosleyite, a Leaseite or a female William Joyce?

Watching the film it was very apparent that the original BBC series and the feature film made in the early 1970s were far superior to its present incarnation.

            It is worth mentioning in passing that although the original series was full of laughs it also had a darker side. None of the characters were working class, they were all small businessman or management save for junior bank clerk Pike (the “stupid boy”) and the retired Private Godfrey. In one episode when a Soviet dignitary visit’s the town, a few anti-communist remarks are made. In another episode the platoon are sent to arrest in an IRA volunteer.

On balance the later film is worse because the black-marketeering spiv Private Walker is elevated to hero status whereas the original Walker was a self-centred cynic. This in my opinion reflects a shift to the Right in ideology, not that the original series was in any way progressive as pretended by some.

Revolutionary Democracy September 2015

Bas-Relief at
Paveletskaya Metro Station, Moscow, 1949

By Robert Laurie

REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY

Vol. XXI, No. 2 September  2015 £5.00 + £1.00 from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 The latest edition of Revolutionary Democracy, the twice yearly journal from India has just arrived with its usual mix of interesting, sometimes controversial, political and historical articles.

 The Indian material includes a piece by Badruddin Umar who shows that the Congress Party has from its earliest days been far more supportive of sectarian Hinduism than its secular reputation suggests. He blames these policies for contributing the rise of the more explicitly Hindu nationalist BJP, which is now the ruling party in India.

  Another historical piece come in the form of printing of a 1951 document from the Soviet Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Communist Party of India in which the CPSU comments on the question of an armed rising in India, a matter of dispute within the PCI. Stalin did not think the Chinese example was appropriate for India at that time. He took the view that the military success of the Chinese party was due to the common border with the USSR which allowed the Soviet Union to send essential supplies.

            Ownership and access to the land is an important issue for millions of Indians. One article examines the small print of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act and finds that it severely restricts the bill’s purported good intentions.

 There are two reminders of the importance of the caste system and the “tribal” minorities in contemporary India in articles on the Patidar caste and events in Manipur state. British readers will see some interesting parallels between the British government’s Trade Union Bill the BJP government’s attacks on trade union rights.

 Silicosis, the incurable respiratory disease afflicting those involved in mining and quarrying is the subject of an article exposing business and government neglect of the subject.

            Rafael Martinez contributes an article entitled Podemos’s Reformism and the Revival of Keynesianisn which has little on Spain’s reformist social-democratic party, but is useful for shattering illusions that widely promoted Keynesian economics offer any real alternative to neoliberalism.

 Two Italian writers examine the present economic structure of Russia today, arguing that it is now “it is by now completely imperialist (though not at the top of the pyramid), where industrial capital has merged with bank capital, and where the big monopolies play a fundamental role”.

 A recent Telugu translation of Moshe Lewin’s 1967 book Lenin’s Last Struggle is the occasion for an overwhelming critique of his now widespread view that Lenin and Stalin became bitter enemies towards the end of Lenin’s life.

 Vijay Singh is a great admirer of the life and work of Enver Hoxha of Albania. This come through most clearly in with the opening article translated from a St Petersburg newspaper of that viewpoint which argues that the events in eastern Ukraine are largely a result of a battle between two warring imperialisms, American and Russian, for spheres of influence. While it provides useful information on the extent of Russian investment in Ukraine not everyone will be convinced about the general line of argument.

            Other pieces include a contemporary view of the 1973 fascist coup in Chile from the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany which was very critical of the Communist Party of Chile for accepting the view that a “peaceful road to socialism” was possible. An account of progress of a project to publish the complete woks of Stalin and statements from various meetings of members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations round off the issue.