|
Advertisement |
Overall Rating
  Awesome: 57.14%
Worth A Look: 28.57%
Just Average: 3.81%
Pretty Crappy: 1.9%
Sucks: 8.57%
10 reviews, 45 user ratings
|
|
| Good Night, and Good Luck. |
by U.J. Lessing
"Who knew that George Clooney would become the next Alan J. Pakula?"
|
Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s second directorial effort, is a fly-on-the-wall historical drama that values realism over drama. Much of the film’s dialogue is taken directly from TV transcripts and speeches, and apart from Rosemary Clooney’s brief and gentle jazz arrangements, there is no soundtrack to remind you that you’re watching a movie. Clooney has created an important production—an exercise in pragmatism—that effectively captures an overlooked chapter in the history of McCarthyism.The movie chronicles the on-air battle between Senator Joseph McCarthy and newsman Edward R. Murrow, whose choice to take on McCarthy’s ‘Guilt-by-association’ Communist witch-hunt became a seminal factor in McCarthy’s declining popularity and changed the nature of television journalism forever.
I hate to admit this, but I’m not the best person to determine the accuracy of David Strathairn’s portrayal of Murrow. To my shame, I’ve never seen footage of Murrow and have only heard scattered audio recordings of him from World War II. However, Strathairn presents a portrait of such honesty, strength and intellectual charisma, that I found myself wishing he was on the air presenting political commentary daily. With a lit cigarette continuously in hand, Strathairn’s Morrow softly fights for the candor and integrity of the news, while remaining loyal to his friends and coworkers.
A brilliant facet of Good Night, and Good Luck is its scope. Most historical dramas zoom from location to location and character to character, dashing across time to the glee of set designers and makeup artists. Clooney and Grant Heslov’s screenplay never strays from the mid 1950s and the smoke-filled rooms of Columbia Broadcast System’s offices.
Newsmen and newswomen are enclosed in a world of glass and seem to exist only as occupants of the studios and offices of CBS and the adjacent bar. There are no exterior shots. Consequently there are no face-to-face confrontations with the enemy. All spars take place over the fairly new medium of the television.
In casting the movie, the filmmakers decided to use actual televised footage of McCarthy instead of casting an actor: a wise move similar to Murrow’s decision to give McCarthy a chance to defend himself on the air, uninterrupted. Seeing the real McCarthy’s thinning hair, desperate face, and unsubstantiated pontifications serves as a strong reminder of what unchecked sententiousness looks like.
The film is being lauded (and scorned) as a condemnation of the current media, and of journalists’ reticence to substantially criticize the Bush administration for fear of reprisal. While there are certainly elements of this in the film, I see Good Night, and Good Luck more as a critique of Americans’ current overwhelming desire to be entertained. Watching someone like Edward R. Morrow operate, one comes to the realization that his type of honest intellectualism wouldn’t last five seconds in today’s media.
Today’s popular political analysis has no room for focus or seriousness. Conservatives get their politics from angry fact-bending pundits. (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.) While liberals get their political views from clownish humorists concerned more with eliciting laughter than effective criticism or praise. (Think Bill Maher, John Stewart and Michael Moore.)Good Night, and Good Luck’s greatest strength is that it asks us to remember a time when intelligence and social concern, not amusement, made the media a powerful force.
link directly to this review at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=13156&reviewer=396
originally posted: 10/18/05 18:46:59
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA
07-Oct-2005 (PG)
DVD: 14-Mar-2006
UK
17-Feb-2006
Australia
15-Dec-2005
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed
![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
