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Ray Wise turns in a moving portrait of Don Hollenbeck

Likewise, the question arises: when does reporting the news become creating the news? Murrow and his colleagues know that McCarthyism is tearing the country apart. Do they wait for others to stand up against the madness and then report on it, or do they take on the giant themselves? They decide to bridge the gap. They conduct a scathing exposé of McCarthy's duplicity, and then allow him a chance to respond. The rambling alcoholic senator begins to undo himself.

Good Night, and Good Luck is worth seeing just for its masterful black-and-white photography, an art form in itself. It's not just a lack of color film stock. Classics like Citizen Kane and Psycho are powerful because of, not in spite of, being shot in black and white.

Straithairn, a consistent journeyman actor on stage and screen, finally gets a chance to carry a film here in the role of Murrow. That is not to diminish the other actors, but Stratihairn is just so vivid that we experience the film as his. Frank Langella is particularly good as William Paley, and Ray Wise turns in a moving portrait of the doomed Don Hollenbeck, showing us the human cost of the madness.

Tate Donovan as Jesse Zousmer and Grant Heslov as Don Hewitt

The interaction of the characters brings back the tone of an era long gone. The all-male newsroom is a haze of gray as the journalists light cigarettes one after another. Murrow, like many television personalities of the time, smokes on camera. A commercial extols the virtue of viewers whose sophistication leads them to smoke Kents. When a hard day is over the journalists unwind with Scotch. No jogging or squash for these guys. A lot of them, Murrow included, succumbed to early deaths from cancer and heart disease.

But another part of that era was the integrity of journalists who were forged during the Great Depression and World War II. These were men who knew that ideas, and the actions that sprung from those ideas, mattered. For them ratings were not the end-all. They were not television "personalities." They were dedicated men who saw their work as essential to the functioning of a democracy.

Good Night, and Good Luck will be particularly interesting to the politically and historically sophisticated, but anyone with a basic knowledge of the McCarthy era should be able to follow it. Those in positions of leadership in churches and other ministries will see it as a cautionary tale: Don't let anyone else do your thinking for you. The truth is the thing. Cherish it and defend it.

Talk About It

1. Why do free people sometimes allow their freedoms to be taken away?
   
   
2. How can we fight against guilt by association? What would Scripture advise?
   
   
3. Why don't people challenge statements by influential figures that they know are false?
   
   
4. Why did people call the anti-communist attacks a "witch hunt?" Does anything like that go on today? Discuss.
   
   
5. How is modern television news compromised by the need for high ratings?

The Family Corner

The film is rated PG for mild thematic elements and brief language. There is no sex or violence. The subject matter will be of interest to older teenagers, but younger kids will not understand the issues.

Photos © Copyright Warner Independent Pictures

© Stefan Ulstein 2005, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

"Watching Good Night, and Good Luck is like seeing the pages of Life magazine, circa 1954, come to life on the screen," raves Stefan Ulstein (Christianity Today Movies). "George Clooney's original and powerful vision of Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy is a work of art."

I agree with Ulstein, and so do other Christian film critics: this is a riveting production. Clooney isn't just another celebrity who fancies himself as a director. Here he has choreographed the most tightly wound suspense film about telling the truth since Michael Mann's Oscar-nominated The Insider.

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