To Murrow's yesterday, today ...

Rating: 6/10 (12 January 2006)

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK begins and ends with Edward R. Murrow giving a keynote address at the Radio-Television News Directors Association's 1958 Chicago convention, at a fancy dress dinner designed to honor the newsman himself. The film spares us the lengthy address in its entirety, but the gist of the diatribe finds Murrow bemoaning the declining state of broadcast news in particular and the mediocrity of television in general. He takes exception with television wasting its potential with the likes of Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen, when what the public really needs -- whether it wants it or not -- is documentary reports on deteriorating schools and the dire state of mid-Eastern politics.
Murrow is, of course, the patron saint of TV journalism. Whenever a situation requires that the highest standards of broadcast journalism be defined, Murrow's name is evoked as the benchmark by which all other newspeople must be judged. Thus the problem facing GOOD NIGHT director and co-author George Clooney was how to portray Murrow without making him seem too godlike. So, we get Murrow's 1958 speech: He was invited to be showered with rose petals for his contributions and he responds like a stern father scolding his children because they didn't make straight A's on their report cards. As played by David Strathairn, Murrow comes off as cold, condescending and humorless. It is a deft performance, but certainly not endearing.
But, I suppose, Clooney didn't think Murrow had to be likable, since he is already beyond reproach. GOOD NIGHT concerns Murrow's legendary confrontation with anti-commie crusader Sen. Joesph McCarthy and never is there any doubt of Murrow's righteousness nor of McCarthy's evil. The film is in black and white in more ways than one. Whether or not this represents historical accuracy, it does make for strangely indifferent drama. There is little doubt that Murrow will put McCarthy in his place, thus the only real drama in GOOD NIGHT stems from how and when the newsman will be allowed to launch his attack. If the film has a villain it is the medium itself for being too timid -- the point of the opening sermon.
The irony is that while the filmmakers call for a more aggressive and activist (liberal) media, the film itself is surprisingly inert. I won't question the courage it took for Murrow and company to stand up to McCarthy, but I don't think the film gives a clear picture of just why it took courage in the first place. As portrayed in GOOD NIGHT there is little real sense of the power that McCarthy held and even less sense of the genuine fear that communism held for the post-war American public. Communism was a growing power in the world and a threat, not just to good old American capitalism, but to journalistic and artistic freedoms as well. The film discounts that reality -- perhaps, because liberals never have seen communism as a real threat -- thus it is never acknowledged that McCarthy had his appeal and wasn't just some evil right-wing bogeyman. McCarthy's power and popularity grew as much from the public will as it did from his own overzealous paranoia.
There isn't a hint of the danger that communism represented (whether real or imagined) and not even much feel for the threat of McCarthyism either. On the one hand, Clooney chose an easy target by having McCarthy as his villain, but on the other hand he paints himself into a corner by giving us adversaries who never even meet -- not even in making the film, as flesh-and-blood actor Strathairn plays Murrow and McCarthy is represented by vintage film clips, mere shadows on celluloid. Did Clooney think McCarthy's evil should speak for itself, or was he afraid an actor might actually give the character some sympathetic dimension? Whatever, the film is dramatically weak because there is no sense of confrontation in this confrontation. Murrow says something on air, McCarthy responds weeks later on film and Murrow responds to that. It's less a debate than an elaborate game of phone tag.
Inadvertently I suspect, Clooney gives us a picture of a news media that seems isolated and insulated from the real world. The story barely leaves the newsroom, except for in archival footage. And in a strange display of political correctness, the film tries to establish the mood through musical interludes by African-American jazz singer Dianne Reeves, whose lovely voice can't quite disguise the fact that she is totally out of place in this film, in this story and in this era.
Clooney establishes a nice feel of newsroom camaraderie and clearly tells his story in appropriately restrained journalistic fashion, but his story never gains momentum. It is admirable that Clooney keeps his drama low key, avoiding sensationalizing the material, and I'll just assume that the story is as historically accurate as any film can be. Though it is annoying that a film celebrating journalistic excellence has a title that is grammatically incorrect.