Good Night and Good Luck 2005
This one is being tossed around as a Best Picture contender, so I thought I’d go see it. The McCarthy hearings took place before I was born and I have never known that much about them other than the basics that he was on a witch hunt, some people cooperated, some people were ruined, and it didn’t necessarily have much to do with whether they were ever communists or not.
The movie focuses on a fairly short period where McCarthy was concentrating on rooting “hundreds” of communists out of the government. His legacy certainly lives on and I was required to swear I’d never been associated with anyone trying to overthrow the government before I could take my state government job (you have to wonder how effective any would-be usurpers would be if they didn’t have the nerve to lie about that).
Anyway, the whole film is in black and white and McCarthy appears in actual footage only (I think). Edward R. Murrow and his staff are shown producing stories that support some of the targets of McCarthy. Meanwhile some of the staff seem to have real or distant connections to the communist party (a legitimate party in the 30’s and an ally during World War 2).
Here’s the thing: this movie was just kind of boring and I wondered what the point was. Murrow stands up to McCarthy in some ways and dodges the issue in other ways. The movie doesn’t really tell us that much about anything that is going on. Murrow never seems to be in much danger nor do we see the risk of anything he is doing. He does end up losing his prime time show, but I have to agree with the people running CBS that it had more to do with ratings than anything else. Eventually 60 Minutes would fill the gap that Murrow left, so it’s not like the networks abandoned news coverage. At the same time, there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection between Murrow’s coverage and the downfall of McCarthyism either. This just wasn’t the monumental struggle of two titans that I was expecting it to be.
The acting is good despite Murrow’s stiff delivery and everyone looking extremely pasty in black-and-white. It’s amazing they didn’t all die of cancer by their 30th birthdays given the amount of tobacco these people went through. This movie touches on a lot of aspects of television journalism, but doesn’t really hit anything home. I’m going to give a C+.
Owned on: Digital