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Good Night, and Good Luck Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG (for mild thematic elements and brief language) Genre: Drama Theater release: October 14, 2005 by Warner Independent Pictures Directed by: George Clooney Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes Cast: David Straithairn (Edward R. Murrow), Robert Downey Jr. (Joe Wershba), Patricia Clarkson (Shirley Wershba), Ray Wise (Don Hollenbeck), Frank Langella (William Paley), Jeff Daniels (Sig Mickelson), George Clooney (Fred Friendly), Tate Donovan (Jesse Zousmer) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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Watching Good Night, and Good Luck is like seeing the pages of Life magazine, circa 1954, come to life on the screen. George Clooney's original and powerful vision of Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy is a work of art. We tend to remember historical events in the light of the visual representations of those events. As the communist witch-hunts unfolded on grainy kinescope television, and on the pages of Life and Look, they burned lasting images into the public mind. We remember them through the pictures.

Clooney, who has enjoyed spectacular mainstream success on television and in the movies, takes a chance here. Shooting in black and white, he illuminates a short period in the anti-communist hysteria that lasted from the end of World War II through the early 1950s. Democratic countries everywhere had a rational and well-reasoned fear of international communism. Dictators like Stalin and Mao were paranoid murderers. Education in those benighted nations descended into loathsome propaganda. Religions were ruthlessly suppressed. Anyone who dissented or tried to escape faced imprisonment, torture and death. It was hard to overstate the evils of communism.

David Strathairn plays the role of the intense news anchor Edward R. Murrow

Nonetheless, that's like saying a fear of the Devil justified the burning, garroting and hanging of supposed witches in the Middle Ages. A real fear, distorted by political opportunism, diminishes the public's trust in government and actually opens the door to the very influences that it seeks to repress. Such was the case with Joe McCarthy, whose reckless attacks led to public paranoia and steered the nation toward abandonment of the rule of law and diminished constitutional rights. Good Night, and Good Luck captures the fear and suspicion of the times with journalistic clarity.

While hindsight allows us to understand that McCarthy's twisting of facts created guilt by association, it wasn't that clear to people living in those times. The film begins with the CBS news crew scanning the day's newspapers. They come across the story of Milo Radulovich, a navy pilot who has been discharged because of his father's long-ago connection to a leftist organization in Yugoslavia. In his hearing, Radulovich is denied the right to face his accusers and is not even shown the documents being used to incriminate him. To his credit, he goes public, warning that when one loyal citizen is unjustly convicted by hearsay and innuendo, the rest of the nation is soon to follow. Murrow and his crew decide that Radulovich looks good on camera, and will make a sympathetic, articulate subject for an opening salvo against McCarthy. The network executives and the sponsors do not share their enthusiasm, however.

George Clooney not only wrote and directed the film, but plays the role of Fred Friendly

Journalists and politicians knew that McCarthy was a liar and a bully, but nobody wanted to go public and say so. Disagreeing with McCarthy or questioning the veracity of his "evidence" is enough to brand one a communist sympathizer. Where this leads is not hard to imagine. Under the predatory glare of the House Un-American Activities Committee, nobody is safe. The film captures that sense of impending doom as the journalists debate their options.

David Straithairn's Murrow is so tense with barely suppressed rage that he looks like he might just collapse into himself. Murrow, like his CBS bosses and the media in general, tried to stay under the radar of McCarthy's smear campaign. It was just a matter of time, they reasoned, before McCarthy would destroy himself. Just to be mentioned in the same breath as someone under the spotlight was to say goodbye to one's reputation as an American. Jobs were lost. Careers were ended by blacklisting.

Good Night, and Good Luck deals with the very issues that continue to bedevil television journalism. We see the deadly serious Murrow forced to conduct puff pieces designed to draw and hold a lowbrow audience. In one bizarre scene, he interviews the pianist Liberace, asking the gay celebrity when he plans to marry and have a family. Murrow's distraught look when the cameras pull away says it all.

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