Movie Review |
TV's Bout of the Century: Reporter vs. Demagogue: Good Night and Good Luckby George Sax |
|
|
On March 9, 1954, there was a largely coincidental trio of events in an expanding, uncoordinated opposition movement against U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the feared and hated anti-communist crusader. In the White House, hidden from public attention and the scrutiny of all but a very few in government, officials in President Eisenhower’s administration were setting in motion a scheme to put a dent in, and perhaps stop, the Wisconsin Republican’s rampage against alleged “subversives” in the U.S. Army.
On the floor of the Senate that afternoon, seventy-three-year-old Republican Ralph Flanders of Vermont engaged in an unusual attack on McCarthy, accusing him of acting as a one-man political party whose “name is McCarthyism.”
And most prominently, at 10:30 that night, the preeminent journalist in America, Edward R. Murrow, conducted a scathing deconstruction of McCarthy on his weekly CBS TV public affairs program, “See It Now.”
Murrow’s broadcast challenge to the senator is probably the most celebrated effort by anyone in the annals of American journalism, on or off TV. It’s the most admirable accomplishment of Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s film about the broadcast and the circumstances surrounding it, that it conveys what seemed at the time to be at stake, and what really was.
Clooney, who directed and co-wrote the film (and appears as Murrow’s producer, Fred Friendly), has managed this, in an unfussy, economical style. Good Night justifies Clooney’s unusual choice of subject matter and his approach to it. Categorically, you can call it a deluxe version of a television docudrama, but you won’t be slighting it. The fit between style and content is impressive.
Clooney and script collaborator Grant Heslov confine most of the action to CBS’s Manhattan newsrooms and offices. With the exception of a married couple on Murrow’s staff (Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson), none of the movie’s characters is shown to have a life outside of the network’s news operations (unless you include a couple of scenes in a bar near CBS where they gather for alcoholic and mutual reinforcement).
By tightly controlling its physical and human scale, Clooney heightens his film’s gradually building drama, sharpening its focus on the importance of the series of events it depicts. Most of the entries in the public affairs “true story” genre feature a wide range of characters, real and compositely fictional, and a large number of recreated settings. Not this one.
Good Night is about one of those watershed moments in our national life and political history, but there are no politicians in it. McCarthy shows up, of course, but not via any actor’s impersonation. He’s the sure-enough real thing. Clooney has shrewdly chosen to present him through film clips and kinescope excerpts. It’s compelling, and a little unnerving, to see and hear “Tailgunner Joe” in action: the glowering, theatrical menace; the droning, studied, rumbling voicings that deliver his reckless, terroristic accusations. The film’s artful employment of the real McCarthy makes it easier to understand what Murrow and his colleagues were up against.
There is one central actorly impression in Good Night, David Strathairn’s Murrow. “Doing” Murrow may not be a daunting assignment for a trained actor with the appropriate physical equipment, and the newsman’s famous dryly sonorous baritone and oddly inflected voice-of-doom delivery have been caricatured before, but Strathairn has done considerably more; his Murrow is a believable individual, a man, not just a symbol. The film may be a little too respectful in its treatment, but this is an acceptable simplification.
The portrayal serves Clooney’s generally understated, but scarcely disguised, instructional purpose. He wanted to profile a courageous journalistic confrontation with outrageous political license and depredations, and his movie seems historically and morally authentic. He also rather obviously intended to link the story to contemporary conditions in the press and public life.
Good Night implicitly overstates the pioneering boldness of Murrow and Friendly’s acidic critique of McCarthy. Theirs wasn’t the first, as some have pointed out. Martin Agronsky, for example, had addressed McCarthy’s sins on his ABC radio news program, and lost half his sponsors, though not his job. But Murrow had intermittently been calling sometimes unflattering attention to McCarthy and McCarthyism since shortly after the debut of “See It Now” in the fall of ’51. He wasn’t a shirker. The senator’s power and influence might have peaked by March of ’54, and willingness to challenge him might be increasing (witness the other two anti-McCarthy events that day), but the risks of retribution were still widely feared. It was a low, dishonest, dangerous era (to paraphrase W.H. Auden, on another era); even Jamestown’s own Lucille Ball had to answer for a brief flirtation with communism in the thirties. Murrow, Friendly and their staff members made the eventual outcome of McCarthy’s reign of terror more certain.
You don’t have to accept all of the film’s suppositions and points to appreciate that it’s a substantial, pertinent and finely-rendered work. If Clooney wants to draw out underlying analogies with our own times, it’s okay with me, even if the comparisons are a little inexact.
It is worth pondering one line given to Murrow in the movie. Told by CBS chairman William Paley (Frank Langella) that his portrayal of McCarthy isn’t balanced, is not objective, Murrow responds, “I don’t think there are two equal sides to every story.” Neither, it seems, does Clooney.
|
Issue Navigation> Issue Index > v4n44: Permanence and Change (11/2/05) > Movie Reviews > TV's Bout of the Century: Reporter vs. Demagogue: Good Night and Good Luck This Week's Issue • Artvoice Daily • Artvoice TV • Events Calendar • Classifieds |
Subscribe 