Iconography, Not Hagiography

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2008)

Edward R. Murrow is presented as hero and prophet in "Good Night, And Good Luck", but also as a scold and an emotional eunuch. It's a double-sided portrait that reflects the open-ended nature of this atypical docudrama.
David Strathairn's performance as Murrow is the film's standout achievement, a man who has all the right things to say even as everything around him slides down the wrong path. Two of his CBS News employees are forced to hide their marriage from management's prying eyes, while the newshound himself is oblivious to their plight. One newscaster, a longtime friend and wartime colleague, seeks his solace when a columnist attacks him, yet Murrow can't offer up anything worthwhile.
Sure he can upbraid his colleagues about sitting on their "fat surpluses" while television is turned into a damn amusement park. But called onto the carpet himself by his boss, William Paley (Frank Langella), he does a good job of rolling over and playing dead. Of course he will be dead soon enough, thanks in large part to those cancerous weeds he's been helping sell across the nation.
That's probably not the film George Clooney wanted me to see. Yet the movie he directs allows enough space and dimension for that interpretation. We see Morrow as the crusading journalist who took down Sen. Joseph McCarthy and anti-communist hysteria, straightforwardly with humor and contemporaneous news footage. It's not a bad story, and Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov tell it well. But there's something more interesting to me around the corners of the frame.
"I simply cannot accept on every story there are two equal and logical sides to an argument, call it editorializing if you will," says Morrow. That suggests a slippery slope from his lofty perch to ideological bag carrier, but only his unliked supervisor Sig Mickelson (Jeff Daniels) points this out to him.
Because Clooney's film focuses on the positive aspects of Morrow's career, it is accused by some of being too glowing. Of course, Morrow's skill on camera is well represented, and we do get bolts of surprising humor, as when he tells Sig his producer, Fred Friendly, will have to forego Christmas this year.
"He's a Jew," Sig replies.
"Don't tell him that," Morrow responds. "He loves Christmas."
But Strathairn doesn't crack a smile, and there are signs of strain throughout. The smoke he relentlessly inhales. The morose stare as he hangs out at the bar after a show. His painfully phony smile as he asks "Lee" Liberace about his wedding plans.
I'm impressed but not blown away by the movie on the surface. Clooney gets the tone and the iconic nature of Murrow just right, but he also inserts a superfluous story (CBS's secret couple) and allows a couple of weak performances, Ray Wise as the dejected newscaster and Clooney himself as Friendly, too much time.
But Clooney gives you just enough of a sense of this other Morrow to make the film come alive for me, especially on re-viewings. It's not historically 100% accurate, but it's solid where it most needs to be and presents Morrow, warts and all, as a newsman worth remembering.
Who can you say that about today?