Good Night, and Good Luck

Last week I got a chance to see Good Night, and Good Luck, the George Clooney-directed film that deals with the events surrounding the clash between CBS news legend Edward R. Murrow and anti-Communist nutter Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film focuses narrowly on Murrow and his friend and news producer at CBS, Fred Friendly, both of whom worked on the CBS news special program See it Now in the early '50s. Murrow and McCarthy used this news vehicle in late 1953 and early 1954 to take a sharp editorial jab at McCarthy, who was at the time using his Senatorial position to pursue a rabidly anti-Communist witchhunt that served to reinforce his own personal power and megalomania. (For some more historical background, see this piece in Wikipedia.)

As for the film: I liked it, as did many serious film reviewers, including Roger Ebert and my wife. Actually, I have to take a cue from my wife, who thought the depiction of Murrow's crusading journalism was well acted, unexpectedly funny, and gave some fascinating insights into how network television operated in its infancy. And I have to agree with Slate.com's David Edelstein, who proclaims it "a damn good movie!"

I also have to agree with my wife in concluding that the film was less preachy than I expected. Although it does come across as being very righteous (as American journalists do sometimes), I don't find that particularly irritating in this case. But some people did, it seems. And this brings me to Edelstein's colleague at Slate, Jack Shafer, who remains critical of what he calls the film's oversimplistic approach to history. Unfortunately, the media historian in me is compelled to pay attention to what appears to be a critique based on historical fact rather than the formal qualities of the film, which Shafer readily admits are quite superior. All the same, he takes the following position:

A terrific movie about the Murrow-McCarthy duel could be made, mind you, but Clooney and company ignore the material that might argue against their simple-minded thesis about Murrow, the era, and the press to produce an after-school special. It's a shame, too, because Good Night, and Good Luck's unbeatable production values and sharp performances constitute key ingredients of a great historical drama. Plus, Clooney is an able director, artfully meshing the original documentary film footage from Murrow's weekly CBS series, See It Now, with recreations of the studio end of the broadcasts.

But it all goes wrong with the naive screenplay, written by Clooney and his collaborator, fellow actor/producer Grant Heslov. Plowing through the Murrow and McCarthy literature after viewing the film, I was impressed at how deeply Clooney and Heslov researched the topic yet dismayed at how they cherry-picked material to compose their sermon.

I suppose I'm a little ambivalent about Shafer's take. Yes, he's right in registering his disapproval of the oversimplification of the events surrounding the Murrow-McCarthy showdown. This is often a criticism levelled at historical dramas. But the thing is, it's a movie. And yes, Murrow's personal role in the "takedown" of McCarthy is overplayed (McCarthy's reputation and ability to instill fear was already waning by the time Murrow got involved). But movies typically have to simplify the always-complex world of material facts and interpretations down to one or two core themes that drive the narrative along. And movies have to have a strong central character/protagonist/hero to act as the focus for the narrative. You can always argue for packing in more facts, but the danger is that we get too bogged down in the minutiae, and lose sight of the overall story, the "big picture." Film does the big-picture, dominant narrative stuff very well. This film goes farther than most in presenting the details of the clash in near-documentary form (if anything, the film has the feel of a '50s teleplay or anthology drama, and fittingly so). But it can't convey the true complexity of the situation. For that we have books, and thank God for that!