Good Night, and Good Luck
Directed and co-written by George Clooney
Screening nationally from 15 December 2005

REVIEW BY LACHLAN MALLOCH

Edward R. Murrow is the hero of the best and most politically prescient film scheduled for release this southern summer. Murrow was a broadcast journalist in the US from the 1930s to the 1950s, who upheld the highest principles of integrity and displayed great skill and passion for what he saw as journalism’s major role in the cause of progressive enlightenment. His radio broadcasts as an eyewitness to the bombing of London in the Second World War are legendary.

Murrow has pride of place as one of the “great mavericks” of journalism in the twentieth century in John Pilger’s 2004 book Tell Me No Lies. Pilger says that Murrow’s magazine style of television — which may be disparaged by some as “editorialising” but lauded by others as brave honesty — is “virtually extinct today”. He refers to Murrow’s most influential program See it Now, which started in 1951 and aired on CBS TV for six years.

Good Night, and Good Luck, named after Murrow’s unique sign-off at the end of all his programs, rounds off an encouraging year of progressive-oriented film releases and is the most timely cinematic release since Fahrenheit 9/11.

It’s a rare style of film — a dramatised version of history, where actors read from real historical scripts, portraying real historical events. The fact that it is acted and produced in the present day adds immediacy, drama and broad appeal that could not have been achieved by a straight documentary. A further dimension of historical authenticity is added by having Senator Joseph McCarthy “play himself”, appearing as a character in the film via the careful interspersion of archival footage.

Thus George Clooney — clearly enjoying himself in the supporting lead role as See it Now’s producer Fred Friendly — delivers a near-flawless film.

The movie’s pace, its script and mis-en-scene, filmed in black and white, create an engaging picture. The film’s success, of course, derives partly from the gripping historical story it tells, but David Strathairn’s tremendous performance as Murrow is equally important.

Strathairn was so authoritative in the lead role that Clooney says, “We all just sat there with our mouths open ... he was so transformed that I’d look up and forget that it wasn’t Murrow ... he was brilliant”.

The dramatic centrepiece of the film is Murrow’s public exposure of the bullying and mendacity of Senator McCarthy’s communist “witch hunts”. It’s played out in a thrilling fashion, captured in Fred Friendly’s announcement that “we’re gonna go right at him!” when the See it Now team decides to confront McCarthy head-on, despite the inevitable retaliation.

But this film is about so much more than Murrow’s confrontation with McCarthy.

Good Night, and Good Luck is at once an introduction to the work of Edward Murrow, an historical account of the political climate of Cold War US and a treatise on the (self) censorship of television and journalism more generally.

It comes at a time when the Western world is experiencing the most sustained attack on political liberalism since the McCarthy era itself, exposing some chilling parallels with today’s “war on terror”. But strangely, Clooney’s director’s statement instead emphasises a personal factor — his father’s career as a journalist, whose hero was Murrow, and only once, obliquely, touches on present-day politics: “There’s an opportunity that one-in-a-hundred young kids actually might learn who Murrow is and have some discussion, some understanding of what and how dangerous a democracy can be if fear is used as a weapon.”

What about present-day politics? The “war on terrorism” is being substituted for the Cold War on communism. Good Night, and Good Luck reveals chilling parallels, including the pervading climate of fear and intimidation.

Of course, the nom de guerre is in each case a misnomer — right-wing political forces are more concerned with suppressing dissent and assaulting civil liberties at home than with eradicating either “terrorism” or “communism”, whatever those ideologies may mean.

Two aspects of this film stood out for me as especially incisive for the questions faced by not only the left, but everyone interested in defending traditional liberalism in today’s political climate. Neither concerns Murrow’s confrontation with Senator McCarthy, although there’s no doubt those scenes make for the most exciting and dramatic parts of the film.

The first is the celebrated case of Lieutenant Milo Radulovic, an Air Force reservist who was accused of being a communist sympathiser and subsequently stood down by a military commission. Not a shred of evidence was presented to him or his lawyer. The charges brought against him and the supposed evidence to back them up was hidden by the military in a sealed manila envelope.

Then, as now, the rule of law and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty were trampled in the name of protecting national security.

“Let us not confuse dissent with disloyalty; accusation with proof”, intones Murrow during the Radulovic edition of See It Now.

The second major thought-provoking theme of Good Night, and Good Luck concerns the consequences of commercial ownership and control of the media.

Murrow’s uncompromising, inspiring speech in 1958 on this topic — almost a career swan song before he died of lung cancer in 1965 — bookends the film and showcases ideals and eloquence that are sorely missing today.

Murrow battled the commercial imperative during his career, showing us that it is less about pursuing ratings and popularity, and more about moulding the news according to the interests of major corporate sponsors.

Apologists for the vacuousness and corruption of commercial news and current affairs like to shift the blame from the systemic class interests of media corporations to the supposedly fickle and conservative tendencies of their audiences.

Students of media and communications today are taught a similar cop-out: that television is an inherently voyeuristic medium. Supposedly there’s something in the very nature of television itself that steers it towards glibness, or as Noam Chomsky would say, a style of programming that “befuddles the huddled masses”.

But Murrow presents a convincing case for the conscious class-interest-based control of the content of television.

If all television does is “entertain, amuse and insulate us”, Murrow warns, instead of aiming to fulfil its great potential, which is “to teach, illuminate and inspire”, then it is nothing, it is “merely wires and lights in a box”.

From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

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