Good Night, and Good Luck.

Starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson and Frank Langella

Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov

Directed by George Clooney

But spying for foreign governments, a treasonable offense, is one thing. Having Communist sympathies, reading or disseminating Communist propaganda or belonging to Communist organizations is quite another. Such activities are not only legal; they’re also inalienable rights enshrined in the United States Constitution. McCarthy placed those rights under siege, and this assault required his destruction. His methods— wild and unfounded accusations, bald-faced lies, the bullying of witnesses and the chilling effect his committee had on the American right to free speech and assembly, damned him in the eyes of history. Because McCarthy had no access to the VENONA report, he had no evidence to back up his claims— but lack of evidence never stopped him. McCarthy knew that merely to impugn an enemy's patriotism was enough to brand him guilty until proven innocent.

Hmmm. I’m trying to think of another, more recent Republican who made wild and unfounded accusations, had no evidence to back up his claims and equated dissent with treason. Wait, wait, it’ll come to me.

The parallels and contrasts between the current government-media climate and those of McCarthy’s time lie at the heart of Good Night, and Good Luck., co-writer and director George Clooney’s excellent passion play about the televised dust-up between McCarthy and legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. Clooney’s thesis, formulated after growing up the son of a Cincinnati newsman, is that today’s media has abrogated its essential role as the voice of dissent. If the movie is an overt Murrow whitewash that fails as drama, it nonetheless provides an important history and civics lesson, supported by a sure directorial hand and uniformly excellent performances. In an age in which filmmakers continue to grovel before a shrinking and increasingly jaded teenage audience, its very existence is remarkable.

Good Night is filmed and structured like one of Rod Serling’s old Playhouse 90 dramas: shot in gritty black and white, structured around a small cast, filmed in an atmosphere of closed sets and claustrophobic theatricality, with tight close-ups filled with twitching eyebrows and sweaty upper lips. Except for a couple of bookend scenes and an insert here or there, the entire film takes place in the cramped Manhattan offices of CBS News and the set of Murrow’s news program See It Now. The film has no score, the lack of which contributes to its aura of sober realism, and its heavy-handed sense of purpose is leavened only by scenes at a nearby watering hole in which a smoky jazz singer reminds us that, in some ways, the 1950’s were a way cooler time than our own.

The signature scene depicts Murrow (David Strathairn) on March 9, 1954, seated before one of those giant prehistoric television cameras, cigarette in hand, with loyal producer Fred Friendly (Clooney, performing the hat trick) at his side, waiting for the on-air light to blink on and history to begin as he deconstructs McCarthy’s witch-hunt on live TV. The film excels at recreating the atmosphere of intense pressure that existed in the live television studio in that day. Never mind that these guys were taking on a powerful senator head-on; in a time in which television was inventing itself every day, these CBS newsmen had no idea how the audience would react to anything they did. They knew only that the television camera was a powerful weapon, and that to wield it carried awesome responsibilities.

Clooney’s debut directorial effort, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, showed a budding filmmaker eager to trot out his bag of tricks; while it never veered into Oliver Stone territory, his staging of Charlie Kaufman’s script was often too clever by half. By confining himself to this picture’s small canvas, Clooney reveals his strengths: an expert’s touch with the actors, an abiding faith in the intelligence of his audience and the ability to stay on message. As if I needed another reason to be jealous of the good-looking, richer-than-God Clooney, now he’s turning into a latter-day Robert Redford. I’ll bet his farts smell like freshly shorn rose petals, too.

Clooney’s two masterstrokes: casting Strathairn as Murrow and McCarthy as himself. Strathairn’s Murrow is a cipher, nearly a symbol. But he’s never less than riveting. When the television camera shuts off, Clooney’s camera bores into Strathairn’s face as he deflates almost imperceptibly with the release of pressure. If the film falls short, however, it’s in the failure to illuminate any aspect of Murrow as a man or give us a clue as to the demons that drove him. At the end of the film, all we really know about the guy is that he was destined to die of lung cancer— there’s enough celluloid smoke in this picture to choke a sperm whale.

In counterpoint to the actor’s art, Clooney shows us the real Joseph McCarthy in all his archival glory, giving an astounding performance that no actor playing a tarted-up fictional representation could ever hope to match. At one point the film simply takes a back seat to an extended excerpt of McCarthy grilling a hapless witness from his Senatorial perch, with the oily snake Roy Cohn looking on like Peter Lorre, and we’re both transported and astounded by the power of the drama. A lesser filmmaker would have cast Bob Hoskins as McCarthy and been done with it.

Still, there’s no getting around the truth: the film is a whitewash, and critics who dismiss it as a liberal screed will have ample reason to do so. The excerpts from Murrow’s broadcasts and speeches that Clooney and Grant Heslov choose to include are aimed squarely at the current Administration, and their pointed argument that today’s newsmen and women are mostly craven lapdogs to the Republican agenda is none too subtle.

But in an age in which the New York Times publishes fiction as fact and Fox News serves as a voluntary propaganda machine for the Bush Administration, isn’t this a message that the Fourth Estate needs to hear? Good Night and Good Luck is timely, opinionated— and essential. It’s the essence of what art is supposed to achieve.

October 27, 2005
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