Did I miss something in "Good Night, and Good Luck"?

Cafe Society
1

I finally got around to Good Night, and Good Luck, via Netflix. I was really looking forward to it - I love George Clooney, I love black and white, I love grown up movies about grown up stuff. I did watch it with my boyfriend, who was politically prepared to hate it, so I was even prepared to defend it. And I hated it. Hated!

It didn’t emotionally involve me in any way. It didn’t make me care about any of these people; it didn’t even make me interested in them. The archival footage was a thousand times more engaging than the movie! I mean, it looked great, the acting was great, there was just no there there. I could see how you could have made a good movie out of that - add another thirty minutes of, say, investigative reporting process, or get me involved in the characters, or whatever, but something! Did I miss something? Did I get the “this film has been edited for crappiness” copy?

I had to really think, after having watched it, that the reviewers who loved it so much were really reviewing the movie they saw in their heads that Good Night, and Good Luck ought to have been. I assume that it wasn’t in the slightest involving because of a conscious choice not to be manipulative… but then they could have made a documentary, which they didn’t either. It was almost more like a “reenactment documentary” or something - the worst of all possible worlds.

So, explain to me why I should have liked this movie. Do not sink to telling me it was 1) over my head, or 2) Important For the Message. I get the message, the message doesn’t excuse this movie in my mind.

2

Frankly, it seems eminently clear to me that YOU are the one who’s responding according to the movie you thought it “ought to have been.” Your reaction is almost entirely due to a gap between your expectations and the actual movie, whereas those of us who liked it, liked it for what it was, rather than for what we wished it was.

3

Well, what did you think it was, then? Why did you like it?

4

That’s probably your problem right there. I’ve had similar experiences sitting through movies where I was constantly distracted by what I thought the person I was watching it with must be thinking about it. Pulls you right out of it.

For me, the movie just came together perfectly. Great performances, especially Strathaim’s Murrow, I loved the high-contrast look, thought the art direction was spot-on – and I wouldn’t change a word of the script. The dialogue was razor sharp, and it told a nice, tight story that had just the right energy and wry humour that I associate with New York newsmen of the time (as a guy who has a fair amount of radio news, including Murrow’s Hear It Now, archived for pleasure.)

5

Eh, it’s not that I watched it with Himself - I’m a notorious movie picker/talker about any movie. I really have a hard time keeping my mouth shut in the theater - Netflix is a boon. :slight_smile: I poke at almost every movie I watch.

See, I agree with every part of what you said except “nice tight story” and “just the right energy”. To me it’s a story that could have been a fifteen minute piece of a large documentary or narrative film, or it could have been a longer film that was more involving, but where it actually ended up didn’t do it for me. The whole thing was really frustrating for me because I kept seeing opportunities that if they’d followed up on them, I’d have liked the movie so much more - there was a little conversation in the hall at the end between Murrow and Fred, and it was such a interesting little window into their relationship - where was that for the rest of the movie?

Lissener? Any actual comments about the film itself?

6

I think your problem is you were expecting a nice scorching left-wing phillippic and got an old-fashioned Guy Movie.

7

I saw it and enjoyed it. I didn’t go into it with any political thoughts, I just went in to see what George Clooney had directed and where it went. I thought it was extremely well done and I did get drawn into the movie. I think they did a great job representing their characters. I know Robert Downey Jr. isn’t the best guy in the world, but I really enjoyed his role in this film too.

8

I am slightly right of center, but I thought it was a decent movie. I thought the subject matter was important and the acting was superb, but I thought it was not best picture candidate.

I really like Clooney, so I am glad he got praise, but the film felt like it could have been a really good TV Movie of the Week (I later discovered Clooney pitched it as a movie of the week).

9

Not at all! I was expecting a movie with characters I cared about and maybe some politics I could feel appropriately self-righteous about, but that’s just dessert after the meal of “involving movie”.

10

On one level, I thought that the movie was almost a “lesson” for today’s journalists. . .as if Clooney would have been happy if just every journalist in the US watched it.

On another level, I still thought it was a good movie. Excellent performances. Good script with nothing superfluous. Great look. For me, a straight-up retelling of a little bit of history is going to be a tough sell as a “GREAT MOVIE OF ALL TIME” but I still liked it.

11

I admit, I didn’t love the movie. There were some things I liked a lot. The cinematography was great, and the acting was good, especially David Strathairn’s Murrow. It sort of fell down on the plot, though, because there just wasn’t much to make the story compelling, or much conflict.

What was the tension in the film? Whether to go after McCarthy or not? There was no “pro-McCarthy” voice…everyone agreed that it was a good thing. Whether the network staff would let them? The network, in the film, didn’t complain. Whether the network would find out that Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson were married and fire them? Not enough time was spent on that, and neither were developed enough characters to make it an issue? The tension between television as entertainment and television as education/a force for change? That’s the most developed tension in the movie, but it falls flat, in my opinion

12

I wasn’t alive during the McCarthy era, but I used to watch Walter Cronkite covering the Apollo missions. (I was a bit of a space cadet.) I remember the shift from ‘straight news’ to ‘news lite’, so I can relate to the sentiments in the film. I thought the Message was relevant to today’s political situation, and I also like history. I like the look of B&W films, and I appreciate good acting. It was a good, solid piece of filmmaking.

13

I just saw it the other night and loved it. I thought the tone of the film reflected the tone Murrow’s newscasts, telling the story straight out, getting to the point without a bunch of the melodrama and fluff we now inject into our entertainment (and news, which is produced as entertainment instead of journalism). It wasn’t a documentary, but it was a clean, precise story that was dramatic by itself without a need for a bunch of emotional set pieces, or people Being Noble Accompanied by Trumpets.

It was also fun pointing out all the TV actors who had roles, especially since the movie was all about the responsibilites and potential usefulness of television. You had Reed Diamond from Homicide and The Shield, Ray Wise from Twin Peaks and 24, the guy who plays Aaron the Secret Service Guy also from 24, and of course George Clooney from The Facts of Life and Robert Downey, Jr. from Saturday Night Live. :wink:

14

Maybe you have to be interested in the subject matter to enjoy it. Whether or not it stands well on its own, I don’t know. I’ve always had great interest in the story because McCarthy almost destroyed my entire family. Everyone else in the theatre (including my dad, who watched his father–who was a lawyer one rung below the Attorney General–scratch the surface of the devastation our family suffered by losing his job, reputation and livelihood) was old enough to have seen the original news coverage. I actually learned some new things from it, although I’d educated myself about the whole phenomenon years before.

15

Movie was fine. Acting excellent. I knew the history that the movie depicted, so there were no plot surprises. But it’s not the kind of movie I’d go out of my way to see again.

16

I liked it for the smoking. My kids don’t necessarily get what the big deal is with smoking, about why there are these huge anti-smoking campaigns. They saw the movie and I said, “that’s what it was like back in the early 60’s. That’s how far we’ve come.”

Kind of shallow, I guess, but I’ll take what I can get.

17

saw it for the second time via DVD, really good but not great movie

thought about the recent by play about Katie Couric’s jump from a ‘less hard news show’ like Today to the anchor chair is a little ironic when you saw Murrow interview Liberace.

though Frank Langella as Paley was great, would have liked to see more of him dealing with issues surrounding the network’s support of Murrow

18

I watched it with a friend. When the credits started to roll, we looked at each other. I said “oh.”, as I was surprised that it just sort of ended right there. The acting was fine, the camera work was nice, but the story didn’t engage me (and this is coming from someone who is politically interested).

19

I think the difference is that Murrow wasn’t best suited to doing fluff interviews, whereas Katie Couric definitely is.

20

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I think this is one of those films that really benefits from seeing it in a theater. Of course, if you’re prone to talking all through the movie, I’m glad you didn’t, but that might be part of the problem. The film is wonderfully efficient at telling the story. You certainly don’t want to be chatting over the dialogue.

The cinematography is so gorgeous it gave me goosebumps. Some shots still linger in my mind, and I’m not much of a technical geek usually. It is one of the best-looking films I’ve ever seen. Unless you have a fantastic home theater system and you’re seeing it in a darkened room, you might have missed that.

You seem disappointed that you didn’t care about the characters. This may not apply to you, but it seems that some people cannot connect with characters unless it’s a personal story involving romance or marital strife or family problems or a sick kid or whatever. It wasn’t that sort of movie - it’s not a bio-pic of Murrow. The characters are certainly important, but they are mainly acting out the drama of journalism’s responsibility in the face of egregiously non-democratic behavior by polticial leaders. The ‘secret marriage’ subplot, for example, was arguably the only “personal” story in the film, and it wasn’t so much about them as it was showing how the time required people to hide not only their political inclinations but also their personal lives to succeed in that environment. The similarities to today’s culture are obvious.

I’m with cbawlmer on this - it is a marvelously tight little story of a very specific series of events. In this way, it is excellent in telling just that story without all the fat of your popular historical “epics” that are usually an hour too long (Titanic, I’m looking at you).

Contrary to Captain Amazing, I found the conflict very tense and gripping. Where was the pro-McCarthy voice? McCarthy! He was almost single-handedly destroying lives and careers of innocent people just because they didn’t happen to agree with him politically, and nobody was going up against him publicly. Or, when they did, they were hauled in front of the committee as communists. In such an environment, just speaking up publicly is an enormous risk. I felt the film brought out that tension rather well. It is because Murrow did what he did that the “silent majority” was able to finally stand up to McCarthy and bring him down.

In the end, it comes down to that it just wasn’t your kind of movie. Whaddyagonna do? Next time, maybe try Out of Sight, starring Clooney. It is, to date, the second of two films (the other being Selena) in which J.Lo is actually watchable.