Film Review: Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
While this is certainly not the first such instance in history, nor is it likely to be the last, it is still fascinating to see “left-wing”, “liberal” and “progressive” Hollywood doing a 180-degree turn in its stance on various political issues, including a preference for war over peace or censorship over freedom of expression. Much of this has to do with the increasingly tribalistic nature of US politics and the gradual vanishing of any kind of principles. In any case, certain Hollywood films made roughly two decades ago look like they would be impossible to make today. A good example can be found in Good Night, and Good Luck, a 2005 historical drama directed by George Clooney.
The film is set in the early 1950s, a period that is sometimes mentioned as one of the darker chapters in 20th-century US history, a moment when the world's most renowned democracy came closest to totalitarianism. The blame for this is attributed to Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator who, following the escalation of the Cold War, frantically spread paranoid claims about a ubiquitous Communist fifth column, creating an atmosphere in which thousands of leading scientists, artists, and even ordinary people with leftist or mildly liberal views lost their jobs.
This period was also marked by the emergence of television as a new and influential medium. One of its first stars was Edward R. Murrow (played by David Strathairn), a prominent journalist and commentator whose weekly show See It Now became one of the most-watched and influential segments of the CBS Network programme. In 1953, Murrow became interested in the case of Milo Radulovich, a US airman dismissed from service due to unsubstantiated allegations of colluding with communists. Despite pressure from military circles, Murrow decided to air a programme giving Radulovich the opportunity to defend himself. After Radulovich was reinstated to service, Murrow chose to take on a much more significant target—McCarthy himself. This decision caused discomfort among Murrow's colleagues, as the senator could accuse them of being communists, and Murrow's boss, William Paley (played by Frank Langella), feared losing corporate sponsors on whom his commercial television depended.
Although Good Night, and Good Luck gathered a lot of talent, few seemed as natural a choice for the project as Clooney. In his directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Clooney demonstrated not only his ability to navigate behind the camera but also a penchant for stories set in the pioneering days of American television, an era during which his father worked. Clooney invested not only talent but also love into this film. The early 1950s are reconstructed with great attention to detail—from costumes, set design, and music to the “politically incorrect” fact that the main character smokes like a chimney even when addressing his million-strong audience.
Although set nearly half a century in the past, Clooney's film explicitly addressed issues that were relevant for the USA during the time of its premiere. Parallels are drawn between the Cold War and McCarthy and the Global War on Terror and George W. Bush, expressing concern for the state of civil liberties. Through Murrow's words, American policy towards the Middle East is implicitly criticised, and one segment (Murrow's interview with pianist Liberace) could even be interpreted as Clooney's support for the campaign for same-sex marriage—something Bush and the Republicans, running on a Christian conservative platform, vehemently opposed at the time. Clooney suggested that the U.S. faces the same challenges as fifty years ago, and only giants of intrepid journalism like Edward R. Murrow can prevent an irreversible descent into totalitarian darkness.
Clooney's thesis, however persuasive it may sound, is compromised by the decision to have the main antagonist in the film—McCarthy—appear only in the form of stock footage. Clooney has claimed in interviews that he deliberately did not cast actors, as any attempt by an actor to give an authentic portrait of the senator would appear as a grotesque caricature. On the other hand, the ugly, unintelligent, and pathetic drunkard from the stock footage is contrasted with the polished Strathairn, who portrays Murrow as a knight in shining armour. Even those unfamiliar with US history will have no trouble predicting how this conflict will end.
Clooney and his co-writer Grant Heslov seem to have realised that the conflict between Murrow and McCarthy would not fill the film, so they decided to spice up the dramatic tension with several unnecessary digressions. In one of them, the mentally unstable CBS anchor Don Hollenbeck is portrayed by Ray Wise, making it easy to predict that this character will not fare better than Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks. There is also a romance between two of Murrow's reporters who must hide their marriage from CBS. Naturally, all this achieves nothing but dilute the film, make it longer, and offer viewers the same kind of standard content as in routine TV films. The undeniable talents gathered in front of the camera are wasted due to the hagiographic treatment of characters who appear as saints rather than human beings. The only exception is Frank Langella, whose character—torn between conscience and concern for his corporation's economic interests—conveys a sense of moral dilemma.
However, perhaps the greatest flaw of Good Night, and Good Luck is that, like many similar Hollywood treatments of history, it attempts to simplify a dark yet complex chapter of history at the expense of its authentic portrayal. Murrow himself claimed that his TV confrontation with McCarthy occurred at a time when the senator had already accumulated too many enemies with his anti-communist paranoia, including the US military, which did not want to suffer the same fate that Stalin had brought to the Red Army during the Great Purge. Hollywood has ample reason to simplify or retouch this sad chapter of history, as it too played an important and not-so-glorious role in it through blacklists, with many careers destroyed via hypocritical and soulless denunciations of colleagues, friends, and lovers.
Despite Academy Award nominations, Good Night, and Good Luck failed to win any. And that, noble intentions of its creators notwithstanding, isn’t such an undeserved fate. The film failed to meet the high standards of objectivity it had attributed to its protagonist.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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