One very powerful movie

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2019)

I first saw this movie when it came out in 2005, and was deeply moved and impressed by it. I've seen it a few times since. I decided to watch it again tonight because I had just finished reading David A. Nichols' book *Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower's Secret Campaign Against Joseph McCarthy*. (It's a well-documented book, and interesting, but it overstates its argument.)
There is a lot to like here. It didn't get six Academy Award nominations for nothing. (Philip Seymour Hoffman gave a great performance as Truman Capote in that movie, but I still don't understand why David Strathairn didn't win the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Edward R. Murrow here.) The script is first-rate, the acting and direction wonderful, the black-and-white look perfect. Even though nothing was a surprise to me, having just read Nichols' book, I found it very suspenseful.
This time around, however, I was left with a few questions, comments:
1) Focusing the first part of the movie on Murrow's treatment of the Rodulovitch case doesn't prepare the audience for Murrow's subsequent attack on McCarthy. If anything, it diverts us into thinking that Murrow is angry with the military, which is not the case. It's a shame we weren't given examples of what McCarthy was up to and why Murrow disliked him so.
2) Even for someone like myself who has studied this period in American history, it's not always easy to figure out who some of the characters are and what they were up to at the time. That might have been handled better if the movie had been screened while in progress for a young audience who didn't know who these people and issues were. Then the script could have been adjusted, or something like that.
Still, this is one hell of a good movie, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in 20th century American history or, more broadly, the role of the media in defending our freedoms.