A gorgeous, claustrophobic, layered reminder of McCarthyism

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2010)

Good Night and Good Luck (2005)
Filmed with a low-key and brooding intensity, with lots of curling smoke and fast, overlapping dialog, this homage to Edward Murrow is also one of the best insights into the insidious evils of McCarthyism on film. Director George Clooney, who also co-wrote and appears in a major supporting role, manages a nuanced and delicate approach where something sensational would have been tempting.
The gradual building of the CBS effort to speak out against McCarthy is layered with more personal problems among the newsroom staff, some of which have to do with being hunted down by red scare henchmen. The maddening complicity of the country as a whole, which often watched passively as people were called to committee hearings or simply fired from their jobs for not signing loyalty oaths, is the real terror, and it has echoes in the current practice of employees signing loyalty oaths to the corporations that then control them unreasonably.
What to look for? The seamless interweaving of archival footage of Senator McCarthy and the contemporary scenes. The startling perfection of much of the acting, especially David Strathairn playing Murrow. The photography, which moves lyrically through the glass walled studios, and shoots from behind people and through groups, and plays with light and layers of images. And most of all the subtle way the political reality is inserted into what looks at first glance to be a period drama.
Fascinating production details? It was filmed on color film stock and converted to black and white, and so it has a slightly softer sharpness than true black and white film. Test audiences complained that the McCarthy actor was too exaggerated to believe--until they were told that it was all actual footage of the senator form the 1950s. Clooney was paid one dollar each for his roles as actor, writer, and director.
The main events occur in 1954, a year after Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," which made its anti McCarthy statement on stage. But Murrow reached the masses, and took a huge risk for his own career and for CBS's reputation, and it paid off. But there were casualties, and compromises, and Clooney includes some of the messiness even as he makes a hero of Murrow. A relatively bleak film, but never slow, and not humorless, either (the characters are writers, largely, and they are witty and sardonic). And necessary, a drama for our own times.