Good Night and Good Luck

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday, _rp_zeal!!

Walking by the moving theater near me I realized they were doing that tricky thing they sometimes do right after the Oscars, which is to show one of the BP nominations--and here you must understand this particular theater usually doesn't like to show anything that doesn't have a number after its title. Knowing the movie wouldn't be there for long, I ran in to see it.

Shallow as it sounds, I think I now have crushes on everyone in the movie. It's funny, I was talking on jlh's lj about Crash and agreeing that you just can't feel close to anyone in the movie because of the structure, the way it just hops around with everyone having to be their archetypal selves. Yet in GNaGL you've got all these character, many of whom look alike--all in white shirts and plan suits, the same haircuts. There's not always an effort to distinguish the minor ones. And yet, they all seem like completely real people. Their commitment to what they're doing ties them all together, yet in the opposite way of Crash, for me. They don't seem like characters supporting the ideas of the filmmaker with little else about them, they seem like characters who share the movies interest in its ideas who do have lives outside them but at the moment this happens to be the biggest thing in their lives.

It's also a scary movie. You can't help to compare it to the way these issues are dealt with now and without wanting to fall into the "things were so much better then" I found myself on one hand enjoying the careful, methodical way our heroes combat McCarthy while otoh thinking how it wouldn't work today. There's a commercial run during the show. The hook is that according to surveys viewers of that show are more highly educated than average, are intelligent, and are not easily swayed by advertising (which is why they should smoke Kents!). It just struck me how different it was to be able to appeal to people for being intelligent and linking intelligence to education. Not because you can't be intelligent without a certain degree, obviously. In the 50s even fewer people probably had those degrees. It was more that it was linking intelligence to a formal, unemotional, critical thinking associated with study, as opposed to now, where so often that kind of thinking is considered suspicious and real Americans are supposed to aspire to "think with their hearts."

The dialogue backs that up too. Without being stuffy or fake, characters just speak in a more sophisticated way. They are able to articulate the important points of what they're doing and debate them. One of my favorite moments of throwaway vocabulary is when someone, referring to Fred Friendly (George Clooney) tells Robert Downey, Jr. he's not being very "friendly." The man says, "No pun intended." RDJ replies, "No pun elocuted." Elsewhere McCarthy (and I agree with whoever it was--was it praetorianguard?--who said McCarthy deserved a nod for Best Supporting Actor--Annie Moss was great too) quotes Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Murrow responds by quoting an earlier line in the same play. When McCarthy throws out accusations of Murrow belonging to Communist organizations and having a book dedicated to him by a socialist, Murrow puts the real facts before the audience. This means denying the association with organizations and *admitting* this famous socialist dedicated a book to him, explaining that this is a man who didn't consider political agreement the basis for association. He even reads the book dedication, trusting that the audience will understand what it says--and I must say, if it were read today I don't think people would catch it.

Not that these people represented everyone in this time period. In fact, the movie acknowledges they don't since even then, people aren't interested in "a civics lesson," they're watching $64,000 Pyramid. The movie is even framed with Murrow warning others about where TV is going (straight to Ghost Whisperer and The Simple Life, apparently).

Anyway, everybody in the movie is wonderful and the world is too. It's the smokiest movie in history, but even that's endearing--and it looks beautiful as well. (My dad started out at CBS in the 50s-he didn't work in the news but knew a lot of the guys portrayed in the movie so yeah, I was totally imagining my Dad in any CBS scene. He was first introduced to my mom in a CBS screening room :-D). David Strathairn is obviously fabulous--talk about doing a lot with a close up. Actually, the only person who kind of pulled me out of the movie was George Clooney. He didn't give a bad performance; it was just every time I saw him it was George Clooney. He looked like such a movie star, and the glasses didn't hide it. The whole cast is wonderful, though, all actors you're happy to see--Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey, Jr., Frank Langella.

I need to give a special shout-out to Ray Wise as Don Hollenbeck. Too bad Best Supporting Actor is such a crowded category, because this was a wonderful supporting performance. I'm used to always thinking Ray Wise is going to be crazy--he's currently playing Vice President BOB on 24--but I thought he was just brilliant. From his first vulnerable, too-bright smile you just can't take your eyes off him. He's obviously got a whole story going on inside him, and I like the way the movie never tries to just use him for its message. Yes, Don fixates on the reporter attacking him, the issues of the movie are affecting him deeply. But obviously he's got other problems. He's not reduced to a victim of the paranoia, but a complicated person whose story had a different ending than Murrow's or Friendly's. You go, Ray Wise!

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's what I would say. It has faults, but it is worth it. It's short, too, and says what it has to say well, I thought.