Luck's not on Clooney's side with Good Night and Good Luck

Good Night and Good Luck has been a movie that I have avoided for around 10 years now because 1) I wasn’t well acquainted with the main subject of the film: famed newscaster and journalist Edward R. Murrow’s fight against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his criminal methods of rooting out suspected communists in American society and 2) to me, from its previews, the film looked extremely boring. I know it is unfair to judge a film by its promotional ads. There have been many films, too many for me to count, that I have written off as shallow or simply not entertaining by a glib rendering of its most interesting scenes. Then after viewing the film, I have come away with a lesson on not judging books by their shitty cliff notes.But after watching I understood something. This movie isn’t extremely boring. It is excruciatingly, unbelievably, almost criminally boring to the point where it’s avoidance of any dynamism whatever seems skillful on the part of director George Clooney and even the cast! What a disappointment.

Many, I know, will disagree with my feelings for this movie. Even my hero, Ebert, gave it 4 stars. My experience clearly differs from the average viewer and legendary film critics entirely. This is almost completely incomprehensible as there is hardly any episode in recent political history that holds more drama, more fascinating characters and incites more outrage than does McCarthyism of the 1950s. My knowledge of it until recently has been very touch and go. I knew terms like ‘Red Scare’ and ‘Political Witch Hunt’ and names such as Elia Kazan, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart but hardly anything in depth about it. After watching a biography channel doc on John Garfield, I became aware that his short career was marred by an accusation from the McCarthy board that he was a communist spreading un-American sentiment through the films that he produced. Interested in knowing how an almost baseless accusation would poison such an illustrious career, I did some research. I found that Joseph McCarthy was a soldier turned politician imbued with undue power by a vulnerable American public terrified of a nuclear attack from Russia and a Republican party succumbed by the same fear coupled with a single minded reliance on the adage “an ounce of prevention Is worth a pound of cure.” Using his influence as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations he alleged that one person after the other was either a communist or a communist sympathizer usually with little or no evidence.  Edward R. Murrow attack on McCarthy and his methods was unprecedented in a time where the CBS evening news was more for entertainment than a platform for serious investigative journalism. Murrow stayed on top of McCarthy’s goings on, joining the list of the senator’s many carpers early. He turned his dislike of the man into nerve enough to launch an attack on McCarthy’s handling of investigations within the State Department and the man himself. His hard hitting expose of McCarthy’s questionable methods eventually created enough ire to condemn McCarthy in the public, the senate and finally in the annals of American History. Murrow’s drive against McCarthy despite the resistance from his network and the risk of ending up on the black list himself represents the best of Journalism. It demonstrates a dedication to truth and almost reckless disregard of personal safety on par with Woodward and Berstein and even Julian Assange in a way.

This is a linear delineation of the facts of this period and in communicating these facts, the film is successful. I know what happened. The problem is, I don't really know why. What Clooney's production gains in historical accuracy and detail, it loses in the pure art of storytelling. In Clooney's production all of the action happens within clips from the era showing footage of McCarthy himself, the trials of his victims and interviews with those involved. The characters (Clooney as Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer, Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba, another journalist, Patricia Clarkson as his wife Shirley Wershba, Frank Langella as William Paley, CBS chairman and David Straithairn as Murrow) surround these clips in limp scenes where clever intelligent dialogue is whispered drolly to one another with all of the energy of your 10th grade geometry teacher  in 6th period. Each of these actors, all boasting a well known personal charm and charisma have all seemed to dial back these attributes to play these serious news people convincingly. Even Clooney and Downey Jr., usual powerhouses of personal charisma, walk in and out of the movie with all the energy and magnetism of, well an aging jaded movie critic.The movie doesn't give them enough room to, well, act. Running a tight 93 minutes, The film is too tightly wrapped around its good intentions to develop characters and create relationships that are meaningful to the audience. Staihairn's performance as Murrow basically amounts to a stiff list of characteristics. In the film's estimation, Murrow is only a tight lip, a low brow, a deep voice and one expression: somber and resolute. And of course an ever present cigarette held loosely between two fingers. His words echo the real Murrow and even contain the gravity of the journalist, but there is a distance that the film never allows us to overcome. Who is Murrow? What was his motivation for fighting McCarthy? Because he's a journalist and that's what journalists do? Well that gives him as much depth as The Man in the Yellow Hat. It's History with a capital 'H' that we're dealing with, but we're also dealing with the people involved.

Hating Critics and Why it's Stupid

 Ok, so this. I just watched a video where an actor in a production of The Little Mermaid said "the critics hated it, but that's only because they have an axe to grind hee hee." It's that type of attitude that really stands in the way of good art. Critics evaluate what's in front of them based on the production's merits and follies. It's a job that can only be written with integrity or you literally risk your credibility and paycheck (for professionals). When you say in response to a bad critique "they just mad" then you call yourself out for being oversensitive and incapable of growing. If you don't give a shit about critiques, fine. However, blaming imaginary beefs among critics and producers is dumb. Most people have this view of critics as lonely, disturbed and above all else bitter bitches butt hurt over something in their past. Their path as critics is a way on unleashing hell on a world that has hurt them. You see this type of depiction in "Ratatouie" for instance. But it's important for a layman to realize that this image of the bitter critic is circulated by the artists themselves. They've crafted this idea of criticism as only a revenge activity for the emotionally damaged. In fact, it's a job. Someone with experience has to tell others if this art has merit. Doing so can save money, time for film goers which are among the most important things in our lives. It can also have an edifying influence on the film industry itself. Without critics to check them, producers could technically put any self-aggrandizing nonsense they want on screen and audiences would have to put up with it. Instead critics provide the balance to an industry that desperately needs it. Their services are undermined however when artists in the production distregard their words as fodder for hate. Can it be fun to tear into a movie that you don't like? Yes. Is it even better to be swept off your feet by a great film? Absolutely. Much better. If you give me something gross to digest, don't be mad if I spit it back up.