Think Pink

Rating: 8/10 (18 February 2006)

Two newsrooms preserved in black and white 60 years apart; two men who enjoyed power - albeit one considerably more than the other - who both thought it gave them the divine right to manipulate public opinion; two exceptional ensemble acting teams. I doubt very much whether George Clooney knowingly set out to replicate aspects of Citizen Kane and I doubt even more that he'd wish to invite comparison between his own fine film and Welles's masterpiece but the parallels are there as noted. One of Clooney's problems is going to be that he is portraying events of half a century ago so that the people on whom they had most impact will be, by definition, now in their seventies or older, nevertheless this is a splendid effort at capturing a particular social climate and it's probable that the one glaring error - though originally written as a ballad in the thirties by the late forties/early fifties How High The Moon had become a 'bop' anthem and was invariably performed at breakneck speed yet here Clooney slows it right down to one half-tone above a dirge - was deliberate, a metaphor for times that were out of joint. Apart from Strathairn who turns in a monumental performance acting honours were a consistently high standard and divided evenly among the whole ensemble.