Hail, Caesar! takes the ironist’s position on religion, economics, and Hollywood but not without first revealing the affinity between all three, that is, substantively, beyond the realization that each requires some degree of faith. While ironism may leave a bad taste with those who adhere to foundations, the film’s social critique is clear enough. At one reflexive point, a member of the communist screenwriters group, The Future, tells us that it was not uncommon to sneak progressive themes into the post-War films of the late forties and early fifties. The Christianity was never so understated. It didn’t have to be during the McCarthy Era. When we meet the great Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (Bluthal), anachronistically looking older than he would have in 1951, his wisdom grounds what could easily be the Coens’ lampooning of all things Red in something that should be taken seriously: if film has contributed to capitalism’s one-dimensional man, then perhaps film can do something about it. Even after the kidnapped and enlightened screen idol Baird Whitlock (Clooney) is momentarily slapped out of it by production head Eddie Mannix (Brolin), he delivers his final lines at the crucifix with such conviction, with such passion, that all of “Hail, Caesar!” believes those lines, too, that is, until Whitlock flubs “faith.” And then, just like that, Whitlock, crew, and audience are pulled from the dream. The Coens’ ironism is the stuff of privilege, as most ironism is, yet we’ve heard the message: screenwriters are exploited, studio wealth is concentrated, and movies are partly to blame. That Mannix chooses to remain in the biz after being offered a more lucrative and easier position at Lockheed Corporation is telling not to mention ironic. There is still more good in the production of a bad film than in the artifice of political reality.