George Clooney's latest...
I saw 'Goodnight and Good Luck' at the weekend. I ought to cut it some slack I suppose, because political thrillers are extremely difficult to do well.
Shooting in Black & White isn't only a gimmick, it does help to set the film in period, and so works perfectly well - although I see no reason to fawn over that decision in itself.
The main problem the film has it that it meanders along from one scene to the next, quickly running out of energy, so that the decidedly anti-climactic ending to what is hardly a lengthy piece comes as something of a relief. Dialogue is used to drive the narrative forward, but is rarely engaging (with the single exception of Murrow's interview with Liberace, which makes genuine humour out of a joke which one might think has little life left in it). This is partly because so much of the film consists of Murrow's on-air newscasts and House Committee meetings (both with their own particular styles of dreariness) or otherwise of office banter which takes more cues from the fast-paced but vacuous dialogue of 'The West Wing' than from far snappier near-contemporary 'Double Indemnity.'
So without much of a plot to reveal - because come on, who is going to go and see this film who doesn't know what McCarthy and McCarthyism are - (there is only one major sub-plot, to which there is little substance, so that, wisely perhaps, it is not explored in any depth) and without any engaging dialogue, the film leaves itself with very little to do but to have Murrow (played as extremely virtuous and self-important) preach about journalism's integrity and the importance of maintaining freedom at home whilst fighting for it abroad. Hints towards the situation in the US today are extremely thingly veiled, giving the film a polemical twist which can only invite scrutiny of the political values it expounds.
So here it is: The Cold War wasn't about fighting Communism, ever, it was about control of resources, as the most sober conservative analysts emphasise (on this point, the work of Melvyn Leffler is valuable); being in the IWW did not make one a communist, certainly not a Stalinist activist (this is the impression the film leaves); attempts by government to undermine the freedom of its people are the norm, not the exception, and the US is no different in this respect from anywhere else; it is the responsibility of the people to scrutinise the actions of its government and to challenge what it finds objectionable - NOT of an elite caste of journalists, who are institutionally incapable of carrying out such work in a serious way, a point central to what the film is attempting to say, but one which it makes no effort to address.
Goodnight and Good Luck isn't a terrible film, but little about it stands out.
Shooting in Black & White isn't only a gimmick, it does help to set the film in period, and so works perfectly well - although I see no reason to fawn over that decision in itself.
The main problem the film has it that it meanders along from one scene to the next, quickly running out of energy, so that the decidedly anti-climactic ending to what is hardly a lengthy piece comes as something of a relief. Dialogue is used to drive the narrative forward, but is rarely engaging (with the single exception of Murrow's interview with Liberace, which makes genuine humour out of a joke which one might think has little life left in it). This is partly because so much of the film consists of Murrow's on-air newscasts and House Committee meetings (both with their own particular styles of dreariness) or otherwise of office banter which takes more cues from the fast-paced but vacuous dialogue of 'The West Wing' than from far snappier near-contemporary 'Double Indemnity.'
So without much of a plot to reveal - because come on, who is going to go and see this film who doesn't know what McCarthy and McCarthyism are - (there is only one major sub-plot, to which there is little substance, so that, wisely perhaps, it is not explored in any depth) and without any engaging dialogue, the film leaves itself with very little to do but to have Murrow (played as extremely virtuous and self-important) preach about journalism's integrity and the importance of maintaining freedom at home whilst fighting for it abroad. Hints towards the situation in the US today are extremely thingly veiled, giving the film a polemical twist which can only invite scrutiny of the political values it expounds.
So here it is: The Cold War wasn't about fighting Communism, ever, it was about control of resources, as the most sober conservative analysts emphasise (on this point, the work of Melvyn Leffler is valuable); being in the IWW did not make one a communist, certainly not a Stalinist activist (this is the impression the film leaves); attempts by government to undermine the freedom of its people are the norm, not the exception, and the US is no different in this respect from anywhere else; it is the responsibility of the people to scrutinise the actions of its government and to challenge what it finds objectionable - NOT of an elite caste of journalists, who are institutionally incapable of carrying out such work in a serious way, a point central to what the film is attempting to say, but one which it makes no effort to address.
Goodnight and Good Luck isn't a terrible film, but little about it stands out.
posted by UK plc at 1:58 PM
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