Newsroom camaraderie
Olivia Glazebrook
Good Night, and Good Luck PG, selected cinemas
From playing bedside dish Dr Ross in the TV series ER to directing, co-writing and starring in Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney has made an impressive career hike in the past ten years.
The film takes its title from the sign-off with which Edward Murrow ended his CBS news programme, See It Now, in the early 1950s. Murrow, one of the great names of American broadcasting, took up a news story in the autumn of 1953 which would help end the tyranny of Senator McCarthy’s communist witchhunt.
A US navy pilot is expelled, without trial, from the armed forces for being a ‘security risk’. Murrow investigates the decision on See It Now, exposing himself, his news team and the entire network to inevitable charges of communist sympathies and anti-Americanism. A few months later, ignoring a warning from CBS boss William Paley, Murrow and producer Fred Friendly go for the jugular, airing a programme which examines the methods of McCarthy’s committee. McCarthy ‘responds’ with a prerecorded attack on Murrow, played on See It Now. Murrow forcefully denies all charges. The navy pilot is reinstated, and McCarthy begins to lose his footing — but See It Now is relegated to a Sunday afternoon spot. Apparently, the public want gameshows, not politics, beamed into their homes.
Clooney has set out to document this episode, and wisely concentrates on the issues raised by the Murrow/McCarthy story without brazenly comparing it with the current political climate. Of course, these days we don’t hear phrases like ‘civil liberties’ and ‘security risk’ without a flash of awareness (and of opinion), but Clooney leaves making comparisons to his audience. The film focuses squarely on the story and its context: Murrow defends his right to investigate McCarthy and not, by exercising that right, to be attacked as an enemy of the American people. He defends every American’s right to a fair and open hearing. And he also (in a speech, made in 1958, which bookends the film) pleads for integrity and responsibility from his colleagues in television.
Good Night, and Good Luck manages to communicate these rather worthy themes with very little fuss. In fact, the only character who could be accused of tubthumping is McCarthy, who appears as himself in archive footage. Opposite the quiet, authoritative Murrow, McCarthy is a greasy, spluttering oaf with a limited command of spoken English. He reminded me of an unpleasant cross between Oliver Hardy and George W. Bush. David Strathairn, playing Edward Murrow, could not be bettered, contributing to the film a great deal of its authenticity. He looks exactly right, his voice and his delivery are spot-on, and he even holds a cigarette the way he should — it is hard to believe that he, too, has not been sourced from the archive. His face is minutely expressive, and when someone asks him a question you can see him deliberating before he replies. This is partly thanks to Clooney, who never rushes the camera off before the moment is done. His direction could hardly be more different here than it was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. In that film, the camera played an extra part. In this, it is invisible, ignored; capturing the action rather than being played to.
Strathairn is supported by an excellent cast — Clooney obviously inspired his actors with the sense of fellowship that gives the newsroom (which we barely leave) its credible feel, its rattle of ideas and banter. Men in braces and rolled-up shirtsleeves smoke, argue, talk simultaneously and mutter into telephones. The hushed studio is a marked contrast to this uproar. Clooney is not afraid to use silence, and the muted ten-second countdown, before the show goes on air, is wonderfully tense. However, I fear the musical interludes might have been a mistake. After the McCarthy show is aired, the exhilarated news team goes off to a bar for a drinking session. Instead of enjoying the jazz playing over, I just wanted to hear what they were talking about.
So determined is Clooney not to ‘star’ that he spends most of the film with his head bowed, glancing sideways at his costars and delivering one-liners from the corner of his mouth. Whether it’s because his face is so familiar, or because of the way he looks, he doesn’t quite achieve the authenticity of the rest of the cast. His is a face for technicolour; perhaps too wellfed, too featureless, for black and white. Or maybe it’s just that he is a star, and even with a bad suit, a pair of glasses and a paunchy tummy we still know it’s George Clooney. If that’s the case, he could do a lot worse than writing and directing the films he cares about, and starring in the films that pay the tax bill.
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