Good Night and Good Luck

                       We will not walk in fear, one of another

To make a movie that effectively encapsulates an icon of American history is a feat that many film makers have tried, and only a few have accomplished. While there have been several success stories (A Beautiful Mind, Malcolm X, Milk, etc.), most attempts pale in comparison to Good Night and Good Luck. As important as the story is to American history, it is equally vital to the histories of broadcasting, the Cold War, and the media in general. Good Night and Good Luck is a tremendous piece of film making both technically and artistically, and has perpetual relevance today, nearly 60 years later.

Good Night and Good Luck is the story of iconic broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and his battle against junior senator Joseph McCarthy's crusade of witch hunting and domestic communism investigations during the early 1950's.  Most characters depicted in the movie are based on real people of the time, including George Clooney as Fred Friendly, Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba, and Jeff Daniels as Sig Mickelson. The film was written and directed by George Clooney.  It was released in 2005, and was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor in a Leading Role. 

Most everybody who has taken a high school-level history course is familiar with the political and social climate of the 1950's and the Cold War. Heightened fears of espionage and soviet infiltration in the government lead many political leaders, most notably McCarthy, to take drastic investigative measures in an effort of surfacing those who had communist affiliation.  Anyone with even remote communist sympathy was persecuted and thrown into public light.  Whether you were a legal immigrant from Russia or you subscribed to a Soviet newsletter, you were suspected of communist affiliation, often based on little or no evidence.  This climate of fear and mistrust even coined the phrase "McCarthyism", defined as "the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence." Good Night and Good Luck shows how Murrow combated this practice using the only weapons he had at his disposal- the camera and the television.  In a political climate when no one dared speak against the government and their tactics, this journalist not only spoke up, but did it through a medium that reached the eyes and ears of virtually every American.  The film followed Murrow and other top CBS reporters and executives as they conducted a series of weekly programs targeting McCarthy's terror tactics, and showed how those programs were received by the government and the American people.  In the face of corporate pressure, government threat, fury from sponsors, and eventual termination of his program, Murrow continued what no other American and certainly no other reporter had the stones to do at the time; fight back.

The element of this movie that made it a masterpiece was the meticulous attention to detail.  George Clooney wasn't satisfied with simply telling Murrow's story, he wanted to capture the mood of the era, and the detail was what made that endeavor effective.  Every aspect of the film exactly portrayed the late 1950's; the soundtrack was heavy with some of the best early jazz hits (When I Fall in Love, I've got Eyes On You, How High the Moon), the costumes were laden with fedoras and modest dresses, and the characters certainly had no adherence to the dangers of tobacco use.  The film was chalked full of real, archived footage of McCarthy and political hearings, and of course the whole film is in black and white. While the story and the screenplay provided the foundation, the commitment to accurate detail took the film to the next step in portraying and conveying a mood and time period.  The film went a step further by not only painting a picture of the social and political climate of the late 1950's, but also portraying the chaotic and never-sleeping atmosphere of a network news station. 

While today's political climate is probably tamer than it was during the Cold War era, Good Night and Good Luck reminds us that while we don't all have a camera and a newsroom, we all have a voice; power, truth-telling, and responsibility are most important for us to remember when they have been forgotten by our leaders. "We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it still exists in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."- Edward R. Murrow.