Brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2005)

Last night I had the privilege to view, for the second time, possibly the greatest film to be produced this year, at least the greatest that I am aware of. Co-written, and directed by Hollywood mega star George Clooney, "Good night, and Good Luck" breaks past the realm the typical motion picture generally strives to accomplish and delivers in addition to simple entertainment: education, and most importantly, inspiration.
This film attempts a task not easily achieved as it works to tackle a moment, and event in American history as important, and controversial, as any the country has ever known. Within a mere hour and a half, Clooney has managed to fully encapsulate an emotionally, and politically tumultuous time with the kind of relevance rarely seen in modern movie making. Centering around the CBS newsroom as run by one of televisions greatest news men Edward R Murrow (David Strathairn), during the communist witch hunts of the nineteen-fifties as run by the junior senator from Wisconsin Joe McCarthy, the film poses the types of questions that have faced television from it infancy, and continue to plague those of society who refuse to sit idly by while one of our most powerful resources is reduced to nothing more then fluff and entertainment catering to the very lowest common denominator.
As I came to the end of my original viewing of this film I felt as though there was so much more this film was attempting to tell me than what I had perceived. At first I was mostly taken by the stunning visuals presented, shot entirely in black and white, the director's use of shadow and light, camera angles, and imagery are enough to make repeat viewing a necessity. I found it refreshing to see that the film broke ranks with the typical story arc employed by so many biopics, choosing to focus above all else on a central theme. The film knows its goals and it doesn't waste time on peripherals. There was no talk of a world outside the newsroom, no family life, or socializing that would have taken this succinct and well paced film down with the type of biopic cliché's I was disappointed to find in another of this years high profile, personality driven films, the Johnny Cash project "Walk The Line."
Upon my second viewing, I realized that this film went far beyond a simple retelling, it examined the American politics of the nineteen-fifties, and reflected on what we can learn from the eerily similar situation the world finds itself in today. This film is about responsibility, it is about the misuse of a medium that even in it's earliest existence was so brimming with potential it's possibilities seemed endless. It was about a man's fight against the corporations who saw television as nothing more then a much larger, and further reaching billboard. Murrow's dream was that this new medium might educate the masses about their world, bridge differences between nations, enlighten the world in a way that no other means of communication had been able to before.
As I sat in the dark theater listening to the words of Murrow's closing speech, I couldn't help but think that those words were intended more for the television executives of today than Murrow's contemporaries; for just as history would eventually see Murrow's ideals, and ambitions for television become trumped by a fad of sub par T.V. game shows, so has the modern chances of television reaching out to the more artful realm of theater and motion-pictures, been eliminated by the likes of "American Idol" and the scores of reality based dribble. The failure of our society to live up to the challenge of Murrow's final statements rang loud through my mind, as the films final words echoed over the ending credits: "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box...Good night, and good luck," Murrow remarked as if wishing luck to the generations of news reporters who would follow in his footsteps attempting to accomplish his dream.