Excellent. See it, especially if you lived through it.

Rating: 10/10 (9 February 2006)

Black and White. Bleak. The fifties.
Most people who lived through the 50's thought it was a simpler time. I did not. It was complex, characterized by people seeking conformity and security who would pay almost anything to get both.
The hero was not a person like Gary Cooper in High Noon. The hero was more like the complicated conformist in The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit.
The reaction to that conformity was the 60's and anyone who lived through those times would certainly say they were about anything other than fitting into a mold.
Furthermore, we should not be confining ourselves to McCarthy. He was a drunken egotist who knew a good thing when he found it. What we should be looking at are those people who thought McCarthy was not only right, but the political guardian and watch dog of civilization as we knew it then.
Who were these people? Why were they so willing to give up their civil rights? And who was Edward R. Murrow and what did he do to remind them that they were giving something up? Those are the questions this film asks and tries to answer. People who go to thinking or spiritual movies quite frequently forget that a movie is only 2 hours long. There is not the time to develop ideas in the same way that an action film can move along. There is only time to suggest probe and provoke into doing more research.
This film is not boring. It tries to tell us what Morrow faced and each character is a little flawed and a great deal more decent.
I cannot end without talking about something personal. I grew up in Canada at the height of McCarthy's power. My city at the time was 13000, still small enough that everyone knew everyone, especially since my father was a doctor who was killed in the second world war. My mother was newly widowed and my brother had just finished his Phd and was applying for work at Bell Tel. He required clearance. I do not remember exactly who came to our door, but I do remember my mother's response.
She was terrified. She did not believe for a moment the reassurance that it was a routine questioning for his clearance. She was too new to the country not to believe that if she gave the wrong answer my brother would be doomed or that we would. And we lived in Canada.
There was that in the air. And it was palpable and I can remember the emotion. That's what happens when people give up their civil rights.
It is why we need another Edward R. Morrow.
And it is why this film is so good: it begs us to listen once he surfaces.