Lessons of Darkness (Page 2)

The question that forever haunts the corridors of The Nation--"Will this movie help to educate the masses?"--echoes again with the release of Good Night, and Good Luck. This time, whatever else you may think of the picture, the answer is clearly yes.

The film's subject, as you must know by now, is the decision by Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly of CBS News to air programs criticizing Senator Joe McCarthy. For director George Clooney (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Grant Heslov), the key choice in converting this history into drama was to use cleaned-up archival footage of McCarthy, rather than hire an actor to impersonate him. The aesthetic consequence is a black-and-white film, crisply shot by Robert Elswit. The political consequence will be the exposure of McCarthy, at full strength, to one or maybe two generations who have known him only as the front end of an "ism."

We'll see what comes of the shock. Meanwhile, to talk about the movie:

Half a dozen characters move around the average scene in Good Night, and Good Luck, talking rapidly over one another while a mobile camera threads its way among them. It looks and sounds a lot like ER. You might imagine, then, that Clooney is making a movie the only way he knows how--though the impression will melt away if you've seen his first feature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which is both exceptionally good and exceptionally different. For his new picture, Clooney may have adapted a style from his television days, but it's clearly a choice, made to establish an atmosphere of people working together.

This is perhaps the most pleasant aspect of Good Night, and Good Luck: the fascination with professionals doing their job. The cast is a high-powered lot--it features David Strathairn as Murrow and Clooney as Fred Friendly, in addition to Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella and Jeff Daniels--but the ensemble takes precedence. Nobody steals a scene, either in performance or in the script, which acknowledges Murrow as the star of CBS News but shows him surrounded by colleagues at all times, the first among equals. Friendly may literally kneel at his feet to cue his broadcasts, but Murrow does not speak without his producer's go-ahead tap.

The movie, then, is about a group of news people daring to take a stand. You learn something about the evil they opposed (did I mention the archival footage?) and also about how they did their work and how they justified it. (When challenged by CBS boss William Paley, who complains that a news program has strayed into editorializing, Murrow retorts, "I don't think there are two equal sides to every story.") Ultimately, the movie is also about the demise of Murrow's group, along with other high-minded news organizations. Clooney frames his story with a scene at an awards banquet, where Murrow eloquently denounces the decline of television news.

We come to a less pleasant aspect of Good Night, and Good Luck. The film begins with Murrow making a speech at you; it ends with a resumption of the same speech; and in between it patches in several more public addresses that tell you exactly what you ought to think. There's so much educating of the masses going on in this movie, or so much bolstering of your opinions, that you eventually long for a little dumb fun, as represented here by an old Person to Person interview between Edward R. Murrow and Liberace. Maybe Clooney understood he was burdening the audience with instruction, which is why he showed his characters drinking and smoking all the time. That's not period detail--it's vicarious pleasure.

On a more serious note (since you insist): The picture makes a case against McCarthy as a liar who recklessly accused all sorts of guiltless people of having been communists. The possibility that someone could have been both guiltless and a communist is not much entertained.

But now, having complained of too much education in this movie, I see I've faulted it for too little. Before I commit criticism again, I'd better just say that Good Night, and Good Luck makes something timely out of its history lesson. It's both a crafty little picture and a forthright one--a neat trick--and got this year's New York Film Festival off to a buzzing start. If that's not good enough, then I say we deserve Fox News.

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