More Everything!

“We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

Watching “Good Night, and Good Luck” I couldn’t help but feel that George Clooney (as director and co-star) was trying to lecture me (not that I minded the lecture!). I really wasn’t familiar with Edward R. Murrow, before this film; granted, I still don’t feel like I know him, but now I do understand what he was working towards.

The movie has a very unique feel to it. It abandons a traditional plot structure, instead, just observing the goings-on in the CBS Newsroom in the early 1950s as Murrow beggs to offer Americans more substance than “Milton Berle in a dress!” As he tries to reveal the questionable tactics that Joe McCarthy is using in his relentless persuit of so-called, ‘Enemies of the State (ie, card-carrying Communists), he ultimately proves that Americans were more interested in laughing than learning.

Clooney does a good job, though I give more credit to the DP, Robert Elswit, for filming a beautiful and lush picture in glorious black and white.

Ultimately, I think this is an important film to watch (at barely 90 mins, anyone can find the time!), but I doubt I will watch it again in the near future. Staying in the discard pile.

[I will confess that this is the 1st time I have watched this DVD since I purchased it, more than 2 years ago. In my defense, it was a used copy!]