Good Night, and Good Luck

Minimalist and pellucid, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) invokes the ghost of a sociopolitical struggle from 1950s America and uses it to illuminate striking parallels between the McCarthy era and the current Neocon-dominated period in the United States.

Great character actor David Strathairn, a regular in John Sayles films, plays TV newsman Edward R. Murrow as he takes on Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunt for ‘Communist subversives.’ The gutsy mano-a-mano is precipitated by the dismissal of a member of the Air Force who is alleged to have family connections to the Communist Party. Condemned without trial, the pilot is not allowed to see the evidence against him and is not afforded the chance to answer his accusers. Producer Fred Friendly (Clooney) supports Murrow in his pursuit of McCarthy, which brings the newsman and his production team into conflict with William Paley (Frank Langella), the head of CBS, as the show loses sponsors and is put under political scrutiny and pressure.

Through a spare and unobtrusive attention to period detail and effective character sketches, Good Night, and Good Luck builds a convincing verisimilitude that results in an absorbing story. Murrow's newscasts are dramatized in the newsroom using actual newsreel footage of McCarthy, which Straithairn interacts with, and there are some nice touches that capture the pre-computer age tv news business. Friendly, for instance, cues Murrow by crouching down by his feet and tapping on his leg with a pencil. The period cameras, sets, and broadcasting equipment all look authentic, and the gorgeous black and white photography give an enduring sense of time and place.

With a refreshing lack of loquacity, the film strips the story to its core, though there is the puzzling inclusion of an entirely superflous subplot involving a husband and wife who work in the newsroom, a storyline that needlessly hogs screentime. Other than that, the story proceeds fluidly in a series of vignettes that are separated by footage of a vintage jazz band that sing old songs that appear to indirectly comment on the action (or was it my imagination?).

Good Night, and Good Luck argues that news media must abandon the necessity to blindly (and blandly) provide two sides to every story and should, out of an almost sacred duty, take a stand to expose moral hypocrisy, especially in our political leaders. Though it's perhaps presented with oversimplicity, it is a message that has, unfortunately, much relevance in our current era of lackadaisical, unquestioning media. The film also throws cold water on the notion, popular in the current U.S. administration, that disagreement with the government indicates lack of patriotism. In Murrow's own words, "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." The movie is in part a warning to guard against the restriction of freedoms by those who seek to repress opposing views.

Thankfully unpedantic, Good Night, and Good Luck delivers its message in a crisp, interesting, engaging slice of actor-oriented cinema.

Good Night, and Good Luck is available on DVD.

--
Directed by George Clooney
Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov

Starring:
David Strathairn....Edward R. Murrow
George Clooney....Fred Friendly
Frank Langella....William Paley
Jeff Daniels....Sig Mickelson
Patricia Clarkson....Shirley Wershba
Robert Downey Jr....Joe Wershba