Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

Premise: In 1953, journalist and host of CBS’s “See It Now”, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), together with his producer, Fred Friendly (George Clooney), and rag-tag team decide to take the bullhorn against Senator Joseph McCarthy (himself)’s red scare.

Okay, so the team’s not really rag-tag. I just liked the way that sounded. I also acknowledge that Murrow and his crew were neither the first nor the last to attack McCarthyism.

Maybe I’m a little bit biased because this movie is so obviously aimed at my bleeding liberal heart. Maybe I’m a bit biased because the Bytowne has decided to crank it up several notches to get me back in the fold. And maybe, just maybe, I was seduced by the spontaneous applause at the end of the film from in the packed cinema because it’s just been too damn long since a movie made anyone want to stand up and cheer.

Even so, I’ve been racking my brain since I saw it on Friday, and I still cannot come up with a single thing I didn’t like about this sparkling gem.

Sure, the sight of a smoky, darkly lit room where reporters discuss the day’s papers from across the country to suss out what news is worth mention on television that week sends my heart into quasi-orgasmic fits of glee because it matches my image of what newsrooms looked like back when the news really mattered. Quite obviously, it matched director/co-writer/producer/supporting player Clooney’s image as well.

I’m going to have to send him a little note thanking him for his decision, circa 1998, to stop sucking and rock has hard as his old school matinee idol good looks, talent, and pitch perfect combo of smarm/charm would let him.

Perhaps the success of this movie is wrapped up in the casting of Strathairn has the euphonically named Murrow. He’s a slight man, not all that well known, and certainly not go-to Hollywood leading man. And yet, there he is: pitch perfect. Cigarette smoke slowly curling away from his perfect placed hand, beautiful three piece (!) suits, power, passion, regret, resignation, humility, confidence, and sympathy. Anyone else would need a three page monologue to get what Strathairn gets out of a single tilt of his head. The way he can never quite look the camera in the eye as he wished them good luck is filled with the knowledge that it will never be enough. Strathairn’s Murrow knows right well that he could be ruining the careers and lives of the men in the room with him when he decides to take on the Senator, and, no matter how passionately they throw themselves into the task, he can never quite get that guilty look out of his eye. I could go on and on about every single gesture and line, Strathairn was that good.

Some people felt that the subplot about the secretly married Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson (a fact that could get them fired at the time) was a bit tacked on. Nothing involving the two of them could ever be wrong, I say.

Not everyone was into the interspersed jazz numbers. I came to the somewhat befuddling conclusion that George Clooney is jazz. I know, I know, it makes no sense in the clear light of day. I still can’t shake the idea that there is some parallel between George Clooney/film and Miles Davis/jazz. Plus, I found it a refreshing alternative to a traditional score full of emotional violins and triumphant trumpets.

Why have Senator McCarthy play himself, people have asked. Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov are simply doing exactly what Murrow, et al. did fifty years ago: letting the Senator damn himself with his own words.

Most of all, why does a movie set half a century in the past have more relevance today than anything else I have seen this year? Because back then the news mattered. It meant something. It stood up to the government instead of playing its lap dog. Bill O’Reilly may net two million viewers a night, but he represents one incredibly biased part of the spectrum.

I was talking with my grandmother within hours of my screening, and I told her what movie I had just seen. She told me that back then, when television networks still acknowledged this new medium as an educational tool, news anchors weren’t all part of a bland, indiscernible passel nor did they occupy the loathsome celebrity realm of “personality.” Back then, back when the news really mattered, the anchors on these shows were people to be respected and admired. They were heroes.

George Clooney, for telling a bittersweet true story, and for attacking the embedded quality of news outlets today, you are my hero. A+