Problems, Plans, and Resolution in Hail, Caesar!

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.

Problems

In the course of Eddie Mannix's day at Capitol Studios, we learn that he has a number of different problems for which he's responsible for finding a solution:

1. His smoking habit
2. Gloria Delamour's French Postcard situation
3. DeeAnna's public image
4. Baird's disappearance
5. Thora Thacker's story about "On Wings as Eagles"
6. Thessaly Thacker's story about Baird's disappearance
7. Hobie's public image
8. Hobie's performance in Merrily We Dance
9. His son's playing position in a baseball game
10. His outstanding job offer from Lockheed
11. CC's near-death choking incident in the Moviola lab

His response to each ranges from taking no action at all (Hobie's performance, his son's baseball game), to developing an elaborate scheme that requires coordination of multiple people to pull off (DeeAnna's image). It's instructive to consider Eddie's contribution in each problem. In each case we'll be led back to a consistent point of view depicted in Hail, Caesar! about the nature of the world and our ability to influence, change, or fix it. This will, in turn, shed some light on why there seems to be little dramatic climax around the resolution to the various problems that arise during the course of the story.

Only in one case is Eddie seen to be taking a deliberate, direct action that unambiguously solves a problem on screen exactly as he set out to do it, and that's saving CC from strangulation at the hands of a vicious moviola film editing machine. There's only one other life-saving action depicted in Hail, Caesar!, and in both cases there's nothing complicated in the minds of the characters about the decision to be made, nor any elaborate plans needed to carry it out.

In every other case with the problems presented to Eddie, it is possible to both question whether he's really solving these problems at all and to insist that his intervention was important and valuable.

In the French Postcard situation, for example, Eddie slaps Gloria around and directs her to follow his plan of concocting a story about how she'd been abandoned by her date at a costume party and gives her a false name to distract the police from her true identity. But of course, the police recognize his car at the house, so they know Hollywood personnel are involved, one of the cops actually recognizes her, Gloria completely flubs her false name, and Eddie ends up handing off a bribe hoping to keep them quiet.

While he does manage to get Gloria out without any charges or an arrest, it's not at all clear that Eddie's bribe will silence any rumors that Thora or Thessaly won't be picking up in the future, so whether the goal of keeping Gloria out of the press has been met is unclear. At the same time, if the police had arrived before Eddie, it's likely that Gloria may well have been charged with some kind of indecency misconduct of some sort or another, so he clearly had an important impact.

On-Screen Plans, Off-Screen Resolution

In all of the other problems presented to Eddie, the focus of the on-screen action is on depicting the nature of the problem, its impact to the studio or the production schedule or someone's career, and the development of schemes to try and solve the problem. The resolution of each problem occurs, in every case, off screen and completely out of view.

In every case, the way in which the problem is resolved does not directly relate to the plans developed to address the problem, though inarguably the plans are seen to be setting a variety of forces in motion that undeniably lead to its resolution.

This treatment of the resolution to problems is quite deliberately taking a point of view that for the most part, the course the world takes in response to our actions is out of our hands, despite whatever sense of title or authority we happen to hold. If this is true for Eddie, it is also true for Laurence Lorentz, the communist screenwriters, Thora and Thessaly, and all the other characters shown to be pursuing their interests.

It specifically takes the focus and value of heroic actions out of the hands of any perceived heroes (either as individuals, ideologies, or as institutions) and distributes it more realistically, and more comically, among the much more unpredictable interactions of many people each operating under the direction of their own inner voice. It has another function of placing the resolution of problems in the minds of the audience; another way of saying that the process of finding answers lies with you, not within the movie.

Or, maybe it's just mirroring what we might imagine most of Capitol Picture's B-movie stories do with their resolutions - they just effortlessly resolve with little explication.

If this seems a relatively pessimistic point of view, consider the entirely optimistic flip side of its depiction of what actually happens with these problems. The resolution of each problem is shown to be coming from a much simpler action or decision than the original plans set into motion, and each problem seems to get worked out, both despite, and because of, the plans and actions of the invested characters.

The Course of History

So why take this approach to telling the story? Doesn't it undercut the excitement of the unfolding action of the movie itself as well as what we might all be taking away about the value of our actions in life? For many viewers, that will certainly be the case. The experience of setting all these spinning plates into motion with all this deliberation and elaboration only to (not) see them sort of land safely on the carpet with the merest of nudges gets people scratching their heads and feeling disappointed. Nothing seems really to have changed much.

This question leads back to two other motifs running through Hail, Caesar!: the promise of the emergence of a new era for mankind, and the passage of time.

The most readily accessible motif is the frequent marking of the passage of time. Eddie tracks his progress by the hour, both in terms of the impact of his actions on the relentless advance of the production schedules of the movies of Capitol Pictures, and in terms of the improvement of his immortal soul. Confession is a daily event for Eddie, with each visit reminding him both of his enduring failure to cure his smoking habit or to stop deceiving his wife about his efforts, and of the fact that he's really not that bad to begin with.

The message that, really, things are ok, is one that resonates with Eddie. Of the different institutions depicted in Hail, Caesar!, this is the message of Capitol Pictures, and it's a message that stands in contrast to those on offer from all of the other institutions: Christianity, capitalism, and communism. This is underlined within Capitol Pictures' Hail, Caesar! story, where the march of Caesar's centurions is described as being threatened by a "new wind from the east". Cuddahy from Lockheed describes the aviation industry as ushering in "a new age" of jet planes and hydrogen bombs. The communists are certain that through direct action they will "accelerate the dialectic and hasten the end of history and the creation of the new man", that Capitol Pictures is just there to confirm "the status quo".

These references out to the history of civilization, religion, and economic systems hint at what we can expect from these messages of human liberation within Hail, Caesar!. Judaism promised the arrival of a messiah that Jews are still waiting for, Rome rose and fell, Christianity promised the second coming of Jesus and an imminent resurrection marked by an end of times that Christians are still waiting for, Capitalism brings private ownership and wealth accumulation even as it increases social inequality and materialism, the march of technology introduces a morass of new social and political problems even as it solves others, and the idea that Communism might once have been seen as representing "The Future" we know today to be pretty optimistic.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

But all of that is assumed knowledge outside the space of the action in the movie. On screen within Hail, Caesar! we have the two stories that Thora and Thessaly Thacker are pursuing that underline this same condition. Thora is investigating an "old story" about how Baird Whitlock got his role in On Wings as Eagles that was probably also an "old problem" that Eddie must have had to fix at one time (but which is not still fixed, since Thora's still looking into it). Thessaly, who insists that Thora wouldn't know a "new story if it bit her on the posterior" is interested in publishing "a story about today", about Baird's disappearance.

The solution to the problem behind Thessaly's "new story" turns out to also solve the problem of Thora's "old story". Tied up in those two supposedly different stories is, in fact, the same story repeating itself with two different actors. This sameness is also underscored by the choice to make Thora and Thessaly twin sisters who are not only physically identical, but you can't even tell the difference between the kind of reporting they do, despite their emphatic insistence that they are in no way the same kind of journalist. Another duality.

The old story about Baird we can safely assume to be true, both by way of his reaction to the communists' threat of revealing him, and his own off-the-cuff story he tells to the communists about waking up after a party together with Clark Gable ("that was before Gable was Gable").  The source of the "new story" is of course Burt Gurney, who we've seen is also a rising star in a sexual relationship with the same director that gave Baird his start.

The Neighborhood of Make-Believe

So the course of conflict and resolution within Hail, Caesar! reflects the nature of The Human Condition. Or of B-movie endings. Whatever the motivation, Mannix sticks with the status quo, offering affirming messages to "all the weary peoples of the world", the communists continue to wait for the emergence of the New Man, Christianity awaits the resurrection, Judaism awaits the messiah, Capitalism churns out the next big market-changer, and people continue to struggle with all the same moral, sexual, economic and class issues they always have since time immemorial. Despite the promise of a new age and the excitement surrounding the plans to get there, in the end nothing really seems to be curing all our ills.

It's worth asking whether Hail, Caesar! can be said to be tipping its hand in favor of any specific way to be in the face of this circus of promises about liberation. There seems to be this Hobie Doyle character coming up as the character at the center of this question. Is he offering answers?

Good question.

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.

Fractals, Duality, and the Search for Truth in Hail, Caesar!

This entry is for people who've both seen Hail, Caesar! and read the viewing guide. If that's not you, read the guide first, then (re-)watch the movie, then continue on.

If you saw Hail, Caesar! and either loved it for its own sake, or completely hated it, and aren't really interested in any of the additional layers or details of what's going on in the movie, this entry probably won't help. If, on the other hand, you saw it, felt confused, and wanted to understand more about what's going on in the movie, this entry might help get the ball rolling for you.

TL;DR

Hail, Caesar! is something something something FRACTAL something something DUALITY something something something.

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 is only my 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.

Fractals? Duality? What?

So the guide claims that Hail, Caesar! is a movie about finding your way. There's something about the "fractal" nature of the story, and something about confusion sending people on a search for (some kind of) truth.

This series of posts is about evaluating some of the details of the action and dialog found in both the trailers for Hail, Caesar! and the movie itself, and how these same elements are driving every aspect of the dramatic action found within the movie. I'm only going to walk through the trailers in this post to get the basic concepts in place, future posts will dive into the actual movie content.

Geek Words

Fractal is a total geek word, exactly the kind of word I'd use to describe the nature of this movie, but not one that the Coens themselves probably ever used in developing or describing it, it never appears in the movie, and it's probably not one you want to use in describing it to your friends, or anybody you hope to convince to see it (again). Something is fractal if it looks the same no matter how much you zoom into it. You can keep zooming in, but things everywhere will pretty much look the same as they did before. And you can do it forever. Keep on changing, things keep on looking the same. I think the core story in Hail, Caesar! is like this, and you'll see what I mean as we go along.




Duality is also a total geek word, and I suppose literature and film analysis people probably use it, physicists and philosophers use it, but you'll probably never hear the Coens use it to describe the action in this movie, and the word is never used within the movie. It's a word used to describe something - one thing - that has two characteristics that seem very different from each other, maybe even contradictory. So, while the word is never used in Hail, Caesar!, the idea it refers to is rampant throughout all kinds of characters, action, and dialog all over the place in the movie. The Coens use word play to echo the concept in dialog throughout the movie. An obvious example can be found in Hobie Doyle's two lines: "would that it were so simple" and "it's complicated". Two very different phrases that mean exactly the same thing. Another easy example: who's directing Hobie in "Merrily We Dance"?




Dialectic. This is a geek word that actually appears in the movie. Twice. Unlike some of the other ideas that are presented in the movie, this word is not defined for you within the movie. You either whip out your phone right there in the theater, or you wait until you get home and nobody's looking so you can figure out what the hell it means.

It refers to a process of trying to establish the truth between two people who have opposing viewpoints. It's another clue you can find within the movie about its interest in people trying to understand what's right or true.

The Four Questions Motif

The four questions highlight a specific kind of action that's found everywhere in the movie. It's a motif that I think is referring to a theme. In a movie that is set in the movie-making industry, the opportunities for ambiguity and multiple meanings to the terms, "role", "actor", and "director" are rich. Worse, there's another motif of showing you movies within the movie, so answers to the 4 questions about who's fulfilling what role in what movie and who the director is can be as simple or as complicated as you want.

An Example

Eddie Mannix has a role he is supposed to fulfill for the studio. The studio heads tell him what his role is (they direct him), but the direction they give him is open-ended and seems ill-conceived. But, he has to decide how he's going to act, what he's going to do to fulfill his role. Is he directly fixing anything, or is it out of his hands, or is it both? Could he be taking on a different, more significant role (at Lockheed)?

There is also the meta-role that we, the audience, seem to want to give Eddie, a kind of meta-Jesus taking on the sins of his world and tending to his flock. Is he fulfilling that role? Who gave him that role? There is evidence within the movie that he is explicitly being given that role, and even having it explained to him within another movie-in-movie bit, one whose set, unlike all the other movie-in-movie pieces, we aren't explicitly shown.

To What End?

The point of the motif isn't to just have a bit of fun warping your noodle, though it can do that. It's to highlight a central question of the movie: how are we supposed to act? How are we supposed to be? What should we do? How does what we do contribute to the wider world? Is it the right contribution, a good one? Could we be making a better one?

The fact that these questions can be found in all kinds of sequences in the movie is another hint that the movie is interested in a broad sense of this question about how to act. It's not only Mannix, and not only actors, but writers and directors themselves, that are trying to do their best struggling with these questions. But, it's also not just the characters in this movie.

The movie-in-movie motif serves to put viewers directly into a participating role as well. This is one of the senses in which the word "fractal" appeals to me. We don't just get to sit and watch everybody on screen wrestle with these ideas. We are brought into the story in our role as audience for the movie. How will we interpret the story it's telling? As a simple, enjoyable story about delight and revelry in 1950s-era Hollywood? A more complicated one of a broad philosophical exploration? Can it be both at the same time? Are we all talking about the same movie? Asking the same questions?

Now flip it around. What if you're in the role of storyteller? What story should you tell? Is there an authority on storytelling? Who can tell you what story to write? What makes a good story? How do you get your story out to the broader world? Will the story you tell be the one the audience experiences? I think these kinds of questions can be found in Hail, Caesar! too.

A Tale of Two Trailers

The first thing is just to talk about most people's experience with the movie. How that goes. The viewing guide mentions that a lot of this experience includes an exposure to the trailer before seeing the movie, and then being really confused or, actually, in a lot of experiences, completely despising it.

Most everybody's referring to Trailer #1 - it's the main trailer used to try and bring people in, the one you'd see during the previews for other movies. I call it The Question Trailer.

The other trailer is Trailer #2. I call it The Answer Trailer.

The Question Trailer

This trailer gives off a certain kind of vibe. There’s the noir look to it, there’s a mysterious and intriguing-sounding kidnapping. Baird Whitlock seems like the center of attention, and Hobie barely registers. There’s the thumping, rumbling, pulsing drums, and it all looks kind of thrilling.

But, check out what's happening at the 2:20 mark. There's a shot of the communist "study group" that Whitlock walks in on. The leader looks at the camera (you) and says, “wondering what’s going on?”. Whitlock responds to this question with a mumbling, shrugging, WTF kind of noise.

This trailer seems to be anticipating our response when we see the actual movie. It seems to be aware that we'll find a contradiction between the experience of watching this trailer and the experience of watching the movie, and it's giving a little wink that we won't be able to recognize until after we've seen the movie.

There’s also an important refrain going on between the music, and the spoken voices heard starting at the 1:43 mark:

• There's Tilda Swinton’s voice saying “I want to know what the hell is going on here”.
• Cut to Thessaly saying, “twenty million readers want to know the truth, Eddie”.
• Cut to Thessaly's POV and you see Eddie trying to get away from her holding the overstuffed briefcase, and he’s saying “truth….yes….hm”. It’s a pretty dismissive-sounding response, like he’s just humoring her, or maybe confused or doesn't even have the answer.
• The music comes up. It’s "Rumble and Sway” by Jamie N Commons, and it’s chanting: “don’t you tell me no truths, I want all of your lies”.

So, this trailer is setting up the relevant questions for the movie. There is something about making movies, something about looking for the truth, and something about the truth getting away from you (or being concealed or unavailable). Of course, this is all accurate in a strict sense - all of the elements from the trailer are found in the movie, but the trailer can't be said to have the same characteristics as the movie at all.

But you have no hope of knowing any of this until you go and see the movie.

The Answer Trailer

The 4 questions are all in play in this trailer, and here they translate pretty literally to a Hollywood actor looking to understand his role in a movie, receiving guidance from a Hollywood director. In addition to the main joke at the 1:47 mark, there’s also an ambiguity, an irony, an apparent contradiction, and a mystery all packed into this sequence.

• The ambiguity comes from the missing context of Hobie’s final line: exactly what is complicated?
• The irony is that the phrase “it’s complicated” is a simple way to say “would that it were so simple". The simple phrase contains the word 'complicated', and the complicated phrase contains the word 'simple'
• Whatever the “it” is that Hobie’s talking about, is it complicated, or simple? Or, is it something that seems complicated, but is in fact simple? The apparent contradiction is that it seems he may be saying that both are true at the same time.
• The mystery is: how did that dialog mess in the studio get resolved into the final product shown in the theater?

This trailer seems more honest:

• The tone and the experience of watching it more closely matches the experience of watching the movie
• It's suggesting that Hobie's at the heart of the movie (while Whitlock is seen only fleetingly)
• It's suggesting that there's something within the movie that's complicated (or simple, or both)
• It's suggesting that there's a mystery related to the process of working through these conflicting messages to arrive at a result (the finished movie) that you can be (sort of) proud of

It's also giving away one of the best scenes from the movie, so it's a trailer you wouldn't have wanted to see prior to the movie. In fact, it seems to be designed for people who've already seen the movie once, and are looking for answers to all the questions they had after watching it, having set their expectations based on The Question Trailer.

Dueling Trailers? Or Trailer Duality?

So now, consider these two trailers together. They're referring to the same movie, but they give two very different impressions of the content.

The Question Trailer is more "Hollywood", featuring a very well-known star at the center of the story, and The Answer Trailer is more "Not Hollywood", featuring a lesser-known actor at the center. The Question Trailer pushes you into the theater on false expectations of a taut, fast-paced noir kidnapping thriller, like most trailers do. The Answer Trailer seems to be sending you back in to try and find the answers to the questions you have about the more contemplative enigma you actually experienced.

You could say that these two trailers are just marketing to two different audiences: one that prefers goofy kidnapping thrillers, and one that likes philosophical parlor dramas with british accents and classical music.

And yet another way to look at these two trailers is in reference to the "the dialectic". From Wikipedia::

The purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is resolution of disagreement through rational discussion, and, ultimately, the search for truth. One way to proceed—the Socratic method—is to show that a given hypothesis (with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth (see reductio ad absurdum).

Here, these trailers have given us two competing hypotheses about what this movie is all about. It's a goofy kidnapping thriller! It's a thoughtful philosophical parlor dramedy!

What are we supposed to do with this? Find the truth? Pick your hypothesis about the movie and see if you can find a contradiction when applying it to your experience with the movie. What kind of viewer are you? Get in, enjoy it, and get out? Overanalyze it and dive into never-ending rabbit holes about fractals and economic and religious philosophies?

These two trailers, taken together, seem to exhibit an awareness that getting to know this movie is a truth-seeking process in itself, and suggest that it can be confusing or complicated. Or, maybe it's really simple (or both). They refer to the same movie, but are also the opposite of each other, while at the same time containing their opposites.

Where to next?

Of course we can't know if the trailers were designed with this purpose in mind, but taken together, they seem to have a form and relationship that I'm claiming can also be found among the chief story elements in the movie itself.

Do the trailers really resemble the movie? Zoom into the movie, and what will we find? Will all this same kind of stuff really be found in the actual movie?

Yes. Yes, it will.

Will it be really confusing?

Yes. Yes, it will.

Really?

No, no it won't.

Next time, on Mr. Persnickety.