The opening scene of Good Night, and Good Luck is both unusual and, by today's standards, unlikely: At his retirement from hosting CBS' weekly news show See It Now, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) expresses his fears about the future of television and tells his audience, and by extension, his movie-theater audience, "We are wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent." Most movie-goers, with their value-sized popcorns and sodas, aren't expecting this kind of abuse first thing.
But Murrow is no preacher, and his grievances about the future of television as a medium for intelligent discourse appear, with a quick glance at, say, The O'Reilly Factor, well-founded.
Good Night, and Good Luck is set almost entirely in the hectic newsroom of CBS at the height of McCarthyism. The fear of being labeled a communist is as thick the cigarette smoke that saturates every shot; no one is willing to challenge McCarthy because they know they will have to face his wildly inaccurate yet damning retaliation. For the modern viewer, this presents a compelling scenario: In hindsight, we all know that McCarthy was wrong, and we wonder how he was ever afforded a shred of respect or attention. Here, everyone knows it, but the country still needs someone to lead the charge.
Enter our hero, Strathairn's sincere, compassionate, eminently trustworthy Murrow. Strathairn channels the integrity and gravity necessary for the role without seeming either affected or anachronistic. George Clooney, who also co-wrote and directed, plays Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly. Clooney's restraint is impressive: Here, he's nowhere near the suave, swaggering protagonist of Ocean's Eleven or its sequel. Instead, Clooney's Friendly is, well, kind of a dork -- with his horn-rimmed glasses and doughy skin, he is well-intentioned and not terribly important. He's more likely to appear in a gray suit next to Strathairn's stark, black and white ensembles, and he almost seems to fade into the background.
In his role as director, however, Clooney shines. The film is shot entirely in black and white, and while the parallels to McCarthyism seem obvious, the decision works on more than one level. Rather than representing solely the one-sidedness of McCarthyism, the fuzzy grays evoke the ambiguities of the era and the fears of every character -- at one point, even Murrow sacrifices journalistic diligence to avoid looking like a communist. The way the clouds of gray cigarette smoke hazily swell and fade in every scene adds to the feeling of secrecy and paranoia.
Clooney also decided to use real film clips of hearings from the Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations, of interviews with the families of those McCarthy slandered, and of hilariously na*ve cigarette commercials. The integration adds to the realism of the film, providing a meta, behind-the-scenes kind of effect. The absurdity of McCarthy's interrogation of Pentagon employee Annie Lee Moss should be comical -- but, like something out of Kafka, her questioners are both deadly serious and completely ignorant. McCarthy's appearance on See It Now, a mix of ridiculous accusations against Murrow and false, self-aggrandizing humility, is the perfect summary of his tactics.
Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov's terse but sympathetic screenplay mainly stays within the confines of the office -- only once, and briefly, do we find Murrow's CBS coworkers Joe (Robert Downey Jr.) and Shirley Wershba (Patricia Clarkson) in their home. Despite the limited scope, much is accomplished through brief, telling shots: of Murrow's concerned face over the smear campaign against fellow reporter Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise), of Murrow's anxiously tapping foot before he delivers the first of his broadcasts against McCarthy. The dialogue is sparse but carefully chosen and makes for a tightly crafted, well-argued film.
While parallels will inevitably be drawn between this film's antagonist and another certain someone's "with me or against me" brand of patriotism, Good Night, and Good Luck thankfully shies away from current politics; rather, it tells an important story about the strength of one medium in effecting change -- and warns us against what it has become.
Director: George Clooney
Starring: David Strathairn, George Clooney, Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey, Jr.
Run Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Rating: PG
Showing at: The Charles Theatre, Loews Valley Center 9, Muvico Egyptian 24
Good Night, And good Luck
