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Good Night. And, Good Luck
directed by George Clooney
written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov
The New York Film Festival
opens Friday, September 23 with the U.S. premiere of Good Night, and
Good Luck, a film enacting broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow’s
televised criticisms of the McCarthy hearings of 1953-54. Directed by
George Clooney, the historical drama is more than a labor of love for
the filmmaking actor, who also co-wrote the screenplay and appears in
a major supporting role.
David Straithairn
won best actor honors at the Venice Film Festival for his immersed portrayal
of Murrow, a man often credited with inventing television news reporting
with his CBS program See It Now. He leads a talented ensemble that includes
Clooney as the show’s co-producer Fred Friendly plus Robert Downey,
Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Jeff Daniels and Frank Langella. Joseph McCarthy
is only featured through archival footage.
The movie
is no more a biopic, however, than "The Crucible" is about the
life of John Proctor and just as that play debuted as a professed allegory
for McCarthy’s “witch-hunt” of communists, the senator’s
hearings now serve as an undisguised parallel to the Patriot Act and other
encroachments of constitutional civil liberties as well as the complacency
of today’s broadcast media. During one scene recreating a segment
from March 9, 1954, Murrow’s pledge that, “we will not be
driven by fear into an age of unreason,” hits most pointedly at
the present. Clooney’s intention to anchor his film and his stance
on current affairs with this moment is evident in the full quotation’s
reprinting in the press notes.
In addition to
representing his politics, Clooney’s film works as homage to many
personal influences, the most obvious being his newscaster father Nick
Clooney. Even before making the connections between then and now, there
were plans to do something with Murrow and the dawn of broadcast journalism,
a subject that he got into while literally growing up in a TV studio.
Another family tribute is made with the soundtrack of songs performed
by Diane Reeves including standards previously recorded by the director’s
aunt Rosemary Clooney and accompanied by musicians who had worked with
the legendary singer.
Good Night, and Good
Luck easily fits with Network and The Insider to
create a trilogy of films focused on the difficulty of communicating the
truth, let alone editorial, via commercial television. This film also
bookends the other two by taking place before each of them while being
produced after. Many scenes are so similar to aspects of Network and therefore
predictable at every turn that if not completely based on true events,
it might be thought too influenced by Sidney Lumet’s 1976 picture.
Clooney’s film, he says, is so factual that each scene is “double-sourced”,
meaning that unlike many of todays true stories, every bit of Good
Night, and Good Luck happened. Perhaps a dialogue here or there was
written but none of it could be considered made up, every moment crafted
through testimonials, memoirs and extensive research into everyone’s
notes. Just as Murrow made certain that McCarthy could not find an iota
of error in his program, Clooney seems to want the same accuracy in the
film. Critics might attack his motivation but not his veracity.
As writer-director-actor of Good Night, and Good Luck, a film
that lays out his familial and political devotions, George Clooney has
created something more reflective of himself than the literal subjects,
leaving most of the characters and scenes as merely incidentals, the story
told lacking its own powerful worth. Whether perceived as a personal expression
or egotistical vanity project, an important film or insignificant yet
overstated association, Clooney’s sophomore effort is a simply accomplished
piece of cinema on its own terms.
Film Cynic recommended: 
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