With the Cohen Brothers You don't joke around, never

Another Masterpiece or False Step?

In contemporary cinema there are few films that generate discussions of merit and taste like the films directed, scripted and produced by the Cohen Brothers.

If it is now established that films like Fargo, The Great Lebowsky and Not a Country for Old Men will remain forever in the history of cinema, it is equally true that there are many films from the Cohen brothers' filmography that often arouse a few too many surprises in criticism and publicity, whether positive or negative.

The taste for the grotesque that the brothers pedantically nurture has led them, in fact, to some slippery slope amply rewarded by the successes mentioned above, to which titles such as A serious Man, A proposito di Davis and many others should certainly be added.

With their latest effort (before debuting on the small screen with their first TV series!) entitled Ave Cesare! the directors have split the critics in 2.

Never as this time, reading reviews and comments, you can see how many people have hit hard on the film with as many people ready to talk about yet another masterpiece of Cohenian filmography.

A film that, therefore, lends itself to difficult interpretations and very questionable judgments.

He is an actor who only makes westerns, I think he can barely speak!

But what is Ave Cesare about? Or better still, what do the Cohens want to express with this film?

The context is that of post-war Hollywood, an industry capable of generating income and wealth but also a world so artificial and pompous that it makes one smile when seen through the eyes of the new generation. Dancer sailors, actresses engaged in water shows, masturbatory sets for stories of imperial enterprises, religious tales for show business, dancers, cowboys and unlikely producers are the pivot of this film that plays as always on the grotesque but does so in a nostalgic frame halfway between the tribute and the spot.

Goerge Clooney and Josh Brolin are certainly the most Cohenian characters in this film. The first victim of a kidnapping by a communist fringe who wants to settle in the capitalist world of big Hollywood productions, the second a careful and cunning industry manager ready to always choose the lure of false Hollywood myths compared to easy money and simple life of a take-off airline industry.

The film fails in our contemporary eyes because it bores us, it provokes derision, it doesn't exalt us stylistically and visually and unfortunately it doesn't even manage to break through with the messages it would like to send, too confused and too bourgeoisly banal to provoke any reaction other than yawning and numbness.

It is not a bad movie per se, but it is one of the worst movies of the Cohen. A film not to be suggested, not to be passed on to posterity and therefore to be forgotten.

And isn't this perhaps the worst fate that could happen to a film?