Good Night, and Good Luck

"Good Night, And Good Luck" is one of the best films of the year. Beautifully directed by George Clooney (who also co-stars), this is a film that exercises a powerful message and social commentary that remains relevant today. Filmed in tight frames of black and white, "Good Night, And Good Luck" also brings back the smoke-filled atmosphere of broadcast journalism and television in the 1950s. The film focuses around CBS journalist Edward Murrow and his attempts to take down Senator Joseph McCarthy through his news program, "See it Now." David Strathairn, playing Edward Murrow, gives one of the best performances of the year and is surely swimming in Oscar territory. Clooney makes his biggest leap in the film industry yet. He, too, may join Strathairn for an Oscar nomination, but in the Best Director category. Filming in black and white, and interspersing news conferences with actual footage of McCarthy, Clooney is an emerging talent worth watching. The ending and the very last frame lets "Good Night, And Good Luck" stay with those who watch it. It ends very abruptly, as if Clooney wants to show the failing, yet lasting effort Murrow had--how he stands as a symbol for the continuation of truth and who is willing to bring it out to the public. The end has a very honest bleak tone to it--we want to see Murrow continue to let the public know what's actually going on in the country, but one man's fight isn't good enough. Clooney chooses a perfect and powerful ending. He makes a bold statement on how public interest in television has contributed to the decay of society, whether it is 1950 or 2005.

Rarely when an actor tries to direct does it work, and when it does you get "character study" without all the supporting scaffold a real filmmaker would provide.

Clooney is a smart man who knows this. So he structures his projects in ways that are well serviced by what he has to give. The last one was an actor playing a character who created a character within. The structure of the thing was all focused on building and exploiting those ambiguities.

Especially clever were the staging devices. Many were novel and a few were particularly striking.

Now this is a more serious, but has the same values. It is after all a character study, and one that deals with these same two worlds. The man when off the camera, and the man on. Fabricated truth as an act by politicians. "Journalism" as way of piercing through those layers.

Two evils, McCarthy and Paley. Clooney's point is that control over the pipeline is what matters in delivering the "real." So he works with some very studied staging. This movie has some of the best staging in recent memory. It must have taken forever to set the angles and lighting. Fortunately these are so powerful that no scene needs more than two setups. This is the way this cinematographer works for PT Andersen too.

The switch in lighting from when Murrow is on the air to just after he goes off is rather thrilling: both are intense, in fact the on-air lighting is stark. But there is a powerful and visible shift from external to internal energy.

If you just saw the script as words on a page, it would seem boring and preachy. It is the staging that makes this thing come alive, that gives a container for the great acting. The only actor who seems off is McCarthy, which is telling.

I have the book Clooney's dad wrote about movies. Fortunately the son has better insights into what works and what doesn't, and has good intuitions about what to attempt.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I don't know where to begin. If one judges a film by its ability to literally transport the viewer to another time and place, this film succeeds. If one judges a film by the cinematography, the composition of the scenes, whether the characterizations are well drawn, this film succeeds. If one judges a film's merits on integrity, truthfulness, honesty, this film succeeds. Good Night and Good Luck captures a moment in time.We look back on the fifties as a simpler time, our period of innocence. This film tells us straight and true that it was no simpler and no more innocent than our lives today.In fact, the sharpest contrast drawn between today and back then is the intelligence and the literacy, the erudition and the commitment to the tenets of good journalism of Edward R. Murrow and his crew.I cannot picture a Brian Williams or anyone else telling the owner of the network, as Murrow tells Bill Paley, "I can't make it to the game tonight. Thanks for inviting me, but I'm busy tearing down your network." A flawlessly executed film, the acting ensemble well cast, the point clearly and eloquently made, this film should be nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and anything else that's out there. Thank you George Clooney. Your father is correct. "You got it right." Thank you Steven Soderburgh. Thank you, Mr. Murrow.

I've had the "Edward R. Murrow" Collection from CBS for years and have enjoyed watching it's biography of Murrow, the complete Milo Radulovich, McCarthy and Annie Lee Moss shows many times. I'm sure George Clooney must have these as well as he used the actual footage extensively in his fine drama "Good Night and Good Luck". As a previous poster said, by concentrating on what was actually presented, Clooney is able to focus on the ethical issues that were the real substance of the broadcasts, rather than the tragicomic personalities involved. He wants us to see that the same issues are in our lives today, (Clooney has had his own battles with would-be modern McCarthys like Bill O'Reilly), but he isn't going to force the issue. He's doing exactly what Murrow and Friendly did with the McCarthy broadcast: using the actual record to tell the story.

There are minor, but significant embellishments, mostly an impressive cast of actors who can tell us more with one look than an entire speech. Leading the way is David Straithairn as Murrow. Except for possessing a higher pitched voice than the original, he's got his man down cold. I would pick Frank Langella as William Paley, here presented as a man with ideals but who is rooted in the realities of business, the sort of guy who has to make the tough decisions the idealists like Murrow don't have to or want to deal with. Then there is Ray Wise as the vulnerable Don Hollenbeck, who was one of the co-creators of "You Are There", a program this film somewhat resembles. He wound up being "there" when he didn't really want to be.

What really enhances the show is the black and white photography, (actually, according to the notes, it was "The film was shot on color film on a grayscale set, then color-corrected in post" – whatever that means). Not only does it heighten the drama, (magazine photographers, in the days when they had a choice, said "black and white for drama, color for excitement"), but the tremendous resolution seems to bring out each furrow and poor on each person's face, allowing the viewer to see into their souls.

The film does not - as some have suggested - unfairly portray McCarthy as a sub-human monster. Its presentation of McCarthy is limited strictly to the thread of the storyline and never does it waver toward name-calling or character assassination. This is particularly striking given that MCarthy was a well-seasoned alcoholic and clearly suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. He was ripe for parody because his eccentricities were so pronounced, but this film is remarkably even-handed about the Senator's deeds and behavior. There are no allusions either to his peculiar friendship with Roy Cohn, whose notorious homosexual relations with private G. David Schine eventually led to McCarthy's demented charge that the Army was infested with Communists. Some have even suggested that McCarthy was no stranger to gay trysts. All of this could have made for an explosive - and typical - "Hollywood" movie and would indeed have been propagandistic, shallow and simple-minded. Instead Clooney has made an intelligent, cogent, fair-minded film about ethics, high standards and integrity.