Jimbo saw a movie last night and when it was over the audience clapped. It’s been a while since I witnessed such an occurrence, but it was a movie like none other I have seen for a while. The movie was Good Night and Good Luck, and I would recommend you see it, if it plays anywhere near you.
The movie was about Edward R. Murrow and his using his television program to denounce the caterwauling of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The movie begins and ends with Murrow giving a speech in 1958, before some members of the broadcast media, warning that television was being used more to entertain than to educate and inform. He made dire predictions for the future of the medium were that to continue. It’s just a shame he couldn’t have fast-forwarded to the future and caught a few episodes of Lost, Survivor and Entertainment Tonight, so he could have eased his troubled mind.
Between the bookends of his 1958 speech was the story of how Murrow took up the cause of an Air Force man, Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the service because his family had leftist leanings. Murrow presented his case to the American people and Radulovich was reinstated by the Air Force.
The primary story the movie told, however, was Murrow’s crusade against McCarthy and his struggle inside of CBS to air such controversial material. David Strathairn played Murrow; McCarthy played himself. George Clooney played Fred Friendly and also directed the movie. I’ve never given to much attention to Clooney, although I particularly liked O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I have to think that he must have considerable directorial talent, because of the way this movie looked and felt and the way the actors were able to tell the story with actions and not just words.
Clooney used tight close-ups and focused his cameras into the eyes of the actors, who completed the illusion by letting us feel we were looking down into their souls. It was a very tense and intense movie and the actors were able to communicate with us by just diverting their glance. For example, Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson were able to tell us there was a common skeleton in their closet. Throughout the entire movie, we wondered how horrible could it be? When it was revealed, we realized we knew it all along. Ray Wise manufactured a smile to disguise his discomfort about accusations that the former war correspondent he portrayed was a “pinko.”
It is a black and white movie, but the lack of color adds to the drama of the movie and it helps to take us all back to a time when right and wrong, good and evil were more easily defined in terms of black and white. It is an independent film, so it won’t be showing at all the mega-theaters, so you may need to look to find it.
If you can find it, I think you ought to make a point to see it.
At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.
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