Good Night and Good Luck [DVD]

This film is a salutary lesson in the fact that the USA goes through regular fits of total barminess, such as the one currently being endured under the present theocracy. In the early 1950s, Wisconsin, a state famous for two reasons only, dairy products and the Green Bay Packers, acquired a dubious third, a junior Senator called Joseph McCarthy, who sought to make a name for himself by finding Reds under nearly every bed. It was an era when people could lose jobs because they were risks to national security, based on evidence they weren't allowed to see and when the media were relatively subdued for fear of being labelled as "unpatriotic" or even "treasonous". Sound familiar?

The story is of the confrontation between McCarthy and the distinguished CBS newsman Ed Murrow, famous for his broadcasts from London during the Blitz ("Goodnight, and good luck" was his London sign-off - after all, nobody knew whether there was a Luftwaffe bomb with your name on it - which he kept). On his CBS news show, Murrow calmly and methodically exposed McCarthy for the humbug that he was, and when McCarthy tried to smear him, equally calmly and methodically took him apart. It was the end of the road for McCarthyism (although the whole travesty of un-American activities, blacklisted Hollywood writers, etc., was to continue for some years).

The film is in black and white and features director George Clooney in a secondary role. Murrow is played by David Strathairn, who looks passably like Murrow, and he does a splendid job as the determined journalist. No actor plays McCarthy, he being played by himself, on old TV recordings. Another good role is CBS's long-suffering boss, forever on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck because of the fear of Murrow's crusading scaring away the sponsors. In the end, he tells Murrow that his type of reporting is no longer required and changes the nature of his show.

Which brings us to the beginning and the end of the film. The story is bookended by a speech that Murrow gave to a radio and TV association meeting, which was a litany of complaint of how television, a powerful force for enlightenment, was becoming a trivial medium, lacking serious meaning and squandering its potential. It wasn't popular, but how right it was...

All in all, a short film (less than 1½ hours) effectively executed and well worth seeing. The atmosphere and feel of the time (including endless cigarettes!) are beautifully captured.

It can be a strange thing when history repeats itself, so it seems no accident that George Clooney chooses now to take his second stab at directing, choosing as his subject the McCarthy Anti-Communist Witch hunts of the 1950's, another time when to speak out against the American government would have you branded as a traitor. Taking its title from Ed Murrows famous closing lines from his nightly broadcast, the film focuses on the sacking of a navy airman without trial or justification just because he may be a "Commie", and then uses this to hang a much broader story about the suppression of free speech and the systematic hijacking of "innocent until proven guilty". What matters here is not whether the airman was a "Commie" or not, what is important is that merely by suggestion and suspicion he has been tired and convicted without due process to the law. A case of guilty by suggestion.

As the crusading and highly intelligent Murrow, David Straitharn gives a deadpan and enigmatic performance, allowing us to realise that although Murrow appears calm and composed on the outside, inside he is raging against the injustices he sees perpetrated by McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee every day. When Murrow calls for tolerance and understanding, stating that not to agree with someone is not to see him as the enemy, McCarthy resorts to insults, in one particular sequence calling Murrow "the cleverest of the jackal pack". Clooney, playing Murrows producer and close friend Fred Friendly (apt name and no joke) gives a quiet performance that refuses to upstage Strathairn, the man who has clearly been tasked with carrying the weight of this weighty subject. Unfortunately, as good as the rest of the cast are (Jeff Daniels, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jnr), the supporting players never really seem like fully rounded characters, real though they may be.

Utilizing a subdued black and white palate and avoiding any barnstorming scenes or speeches, this is a dignified piece of film-making that tries to deal with a weighty and very timely subject with intelligence and insight. This is an attempt to wake us all up to the fact that to disagree with the powers that be does not mean you are the enemy, whilst at the same time decrying the waste of what promised to be one of the greatest tools to educate and inform, the television itself. That the film ultimately fails to pull this of is a result of both its short running time, coming in at just (and I mean just) over 90 minutes (not really enough time to deal with such a subject), and the fact that it feels like a play that has been made into a film (which it isn't). Still, a brave effort nonetheless, and a timely one at that. The dumbing down of television, which has reached something of a zenith in this day and age, confuses the eye and confounds the imagination, distracting us from what is important and allowing the powers that be to do things in our name that maybe, just maybe if we were paying attention we would not be so happy about.

This film tells us about the fight of CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and his team to expose the irregular methods senator Joseph McCarthy used to fight communism. That took courage, specially in the 50´s, a time when the fear of Communism was pervasive and McCarthy had helped to create a climate of paranoia in which disagreeing with him immediately led to accusations of being a Communist.

Murrow and his producer and partner, Fred Friendly (George Clooney) decided to take this matter in their hands when faced with a case that, even though not involving McCarthy directly, was an excellent example of the climate of fear the nation was living in. The following step was to attack McCarthy´s methods, using the senator`s own words and footage of audiences of the Committee McCarthy presided. Murrow pointed truths that many had forgotten, that is, that accusation is not proof, and that “We cannot defend freedom abroad by disserting it at home”. He also made his viewers remember that “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it”.

“Good night and good luck” was directed by George Clooney, and based on a script he cowrote with Grant Heslov. In my opinion, it is a truly outstanding film. Of course, it is entertaining, and has a superb cast. But the real reason why you really should watch this movie is that it brings home some important lessons about responsibility, the responsibility of journalists but also that of citizens. Unfortunately, that is something we all tend to forget, from time to time.

In conclusion, and just in case I haven´t made myself clear, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Belen Alcat