deserving of any accolades that it can muster.
In luminous black-and-white (photographed by Robert Elswit, Paul
Thomas Anderson's regular cinematographer on his masterpieces
"Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights"), director George Clooney (yes, I'm
surprised, too) retells the story of Edward R. Murrow's battle with
Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the early '50s Red Scare.
No one doubts Clooney's liberal credentials. But this is a film that
speaks to the ages -- and was clearly intended to do so.
The immediate thrust of the film is one newsman's assault on a
legislator's hyperbolic witch-hunt for supposed commies, but it
wastes no time in indicting contemporary society for our
complacence in accepting whatever the mass media sells us.
Reciting word-for-word a speech Murrow gave in 1958, actor David
Strathairn (make no mistake -- he will be nominated for Best Actor)
utterly predicts the future: "It is clear there is too little illumination
going on."
A mere decade after the advent of television, one of its luminaries
is already aware of the lull factor TV continues to bequeath:
Accepting as fact whatever Bill O'Reilly says; metaphorically injecting
the morphine of "Survivor" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" despite
a war in the Middle East; a lack of interest in the news over "comfort
food" programming. Murrow viewed television first and foremost
(probably due to his start as a radio newsman during World War II)
as an information conveyor. In the prehistoric "I Love Lucy" era, he
saw Americans as already lulled into lullaby contentedness.
The brilliance of the film is its determination to present events as
they happened, matter-of-factly. Strathairn literally becomes
Murrow, smoking a cigarette a minute and adopting his
authoritative tone in every address. His news staff -- Robert
Downey Jr, Tate Donovan, Jeff Daniels, Patricia Clarkson (the best
supporting player in the film; I met her once -- a New Orleans
native -- and she is the coolest character actress working in film
today) -- speak over each other and interject their concerns like
you'd imagine in a real news room.
To heighten the reality of the enterprise, there is no actor playing
Sen. McCarthy. Strathairn speaks to the man via the actual news
footage. He also "conducts" an interview with Liberace (more found
footage), and we are treated to actual HUAC testimony that melds
in with the storyline as if it was filmed explicitly for the movie. It is
almost like watching a documentary, the realism of the thing.
Again, this being George Clooney, there is always a tie to current
events. In the clip I am confident Strathairn will produce during the
Oscar show during the Best Actor nomination reel, he elucidates the
prime reason why McCarthyism was such an ill on American society:
"We must challenge our enemies not with bombs, but with ideas."
Was this said in 1954 or 2005?
You will not find a better fact-based drama about our current
ideological crises than "Good Night, and Good Luck." This is a film
that deserves word to spread. Our democracy may depend on it.
