Movie Review: Good Night, and Good Luck

It’s clear that director George Clooney wants you to relax as you watch the first minutes of his new film.

Soft jazz notes lend an air of sophistication to the black-and-white scene, while the camera glides politely among the tables of high-society types sipping cocktails (not too quickly) and laughing (not too loudly).

Forget whatever modern plagues are getting you down—the war, the Court, prospects as an i-banker—you’re safe in the vague, comfortable past as shown on the big screen. All Clooney asks is that you let the stylized retro glamour soak in.

Even before David Strathairn opens his mouth, though, the sober grimace on his long face tells you that something is wrong. He’s playing legendary CBS News broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, and the year is 1958, as it turns out. But Strathairn is talking directly to you as he delivers a speech from the dais, meeting your eyes in 2005 as he rips into a complacent culture’s “allergy to disturbing information.”

“Good Night, and Good Luck” proceeds to treat that malady by bombarding viewers with the strongest dose of unsettling history that Clooney can fit into 93 minutes. The anxious tone intensifies as the film flashes back to 1953, where Murrow and his colleagues at CBS have just been pressured into signing loyalty oaths in order to keep their jobs.

It’s a dangerous time to be a journalist. Sen. Joseph McCarthy is at the height of his tyranny, ruining supposed Communists’ lives without a shred of evidence. Constitutional freedoms provide little reassurance to those who run afoul of his partisan rage. While the nation remains in an open-ended war against a shadowy ideology, nobody wants to sound subversive.

No one, that is, except the superhuman Murrow, who uses his position as the face of CBS’ popular “See it Now” news broadcast to air McCarthy’s abuses to millions of viewers. His fastidiously fact-checked exposes are rewarded by all-too-familiar accusations of bias, but as played by Strathairn, Murrow is far too hard-boiled to crack under such intimidation tactics.

His laconic gravitas reaches its height in several lengthy on-air monologues challenging the senator’s actions. The tendentious rhetoric and fits of self-doubt that punctuate the rest of the film fall away as the camera focuses on Murrow’s lined face, sternly lecturing us along with his television audience. There is no one else in the frame, no showy camera moves, no soundtrack—nothing to distract us from Strathairn’s understated virtuoso performance and the blunt, sobering words of the script, which Clooney co-wrote.

The film delights in showing us the frantic behind-the-scenes choreography necessary to create these moments of restrained power on live television. In “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” his directorial debut, Clooney whirled through the funhouse hallucinations of a very different real-life television figure, game-show producer Chuck Barris.

“Good Night, and Good Luck”’s CBS newsroom presents a considerably more noble alternate reality, though an equally chaotic one. Its reporters are constantly being hassled by intruders—managerial types with their eyes on the bottom line, jingoistic pundits, and dunderheaded military commanders who demand to review footage before it is broadcast. Watching Murrow and producer Fred W. Friendly (played by Clooney) fearlessly rebuff these would-be defilers of the fourth estate is enough to make a college journalist break a sweat.

Strathairn’s costars complement his stoic resolve with vividly emotional performances, making “Good Night, and Good Luck” an unusually entertaining civics lesson. Ray Wise gives a particularly nuanced portrayal of the human costs incurred by political witch-hunts, and Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson are superb in a bittersweet romantic subplot.

The film’s single-minded historical aim leaves no time for these members of the ensemble to be more than minor players. But it’s hard to blame Clooney for harping on his point. Almost 50 years after McCarthy died in disgrace, we live in a country where reporters can be imprisoned for protecting sources, networks censor themselves to avoid being fined out of existence, and questioning the president too closely can get you branded as a traitor.

These unhappy days are yours and mine, and “Good Night, and Good Luck” should be required viewing for every citizen.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.