Good Subject! Not So Good Movie.

Rating: 5/10 (15 October 2005)

A sterling effort, perhaps too sterling. I have seen the original Edward R. Murrow See It Now shows about the Air Force Lt. Milo Radulovich who was discharged from the USAF because his father read Serbian language newspapers and his sister was an obnoxious person, probably a Communist, but then, that was her private business. I saw the episode where Murrow took on Joe McCarthy and the episode containing McCarthy's ridiculous response.
This film added nothing to my understanding of the issues, the time period and the people. So, since the See It Now episodes are available on DVD and video, why see a movie with movie stars that simply recreate those shows almost verbatim? If the film doesn't go any deeper with the issues than the TV broadcasts, or doesn't go into any new territory with the characters, what's the point?
I suppose they could have overly dramatized the situation and co-writer/director George Clooney shows restraint in not doing that, but you can go too far the other way and turn an inherently dramatic situation into a dry history lesson. I wanted this fictionalization to engage my emotions, my feelings and my passions. I felt like I was in a Civics 101 class and I was listening to a less than inspiring professor. Say what you will about Michael Moore's style, but his films do get the blood boiling, either you're for him or you're against him, but you ARE moved emotionally.
This film could have used a nice dose of moral outrage. It wasn't that McCarthy and others were immoral, they weren't, they were ordinary sleaze-bags so nakedly hungry for headlines they recklessly charged people with treasonous crimes and then did nothing to support their claims. All of this was done as an ego boost and a power grab and it was painfully obvious to anyone who bothered to look. This film didn't need to give McCarthy's viewpoint a fair hearing; Murrow himself in the film says that sometimes there aren't two equal sides to an argument. Murrow has a point; slavery has no justification in any scheme.
I really wanted to be moved by this film, but I wasn't. It was all too clinical, something I usually like, but here it didn't work. For example, I have seen documentaries on Titanic that informed me but did not make me cry as I did when I saw the James Cameron film Titanic. And I didn't cry because of the silly love story in that film, I cried at the lost humanity and terror of the people on the ship and the inevitability of their demise. Good Night and Good Luck suffers from too much restraint.
There are too many unanswered questions in the film; for example, I wanted to know why at CBS two employees could not be married? Why did Murrow and Fred Friendly sign the dreaded loyalty oaths? Everyone seems surprised to discover that Murrow signed it; he must have had a reason. Why not share it with us? What's with all of the long, long silences after Murrow finishes his newscasts? What's with all of the shots of people walking aimlessly though the CBS building while non-synchronous sound is overlaid? Why film in black and white? The world did not exist in black and white in the fifties. That's an aesthetic choice, but I can't really substantiate it, except that it is cool looking to have cigarette smoke wafting around inside closed rooms.
Good Night And Good Luck is a noble effort, but for the real history of what Edward R. Murrow and company actually did and said, watch the actual See It Now TV shows, they are available. Regarding the paranoia and emotions of this era, that is better dealt with in the Martin Ritt film from 1976 called The Front starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel.