REWIND REVIEW: Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on January 25, 2024.

(PG) ★★★★

Director: George Clooney. 

Cast: David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels, Tate Donovan, Ray Wise. 

"Welcome to America's Most Serious Home Videos...."

The release of George Clooney's second film as director coincided with the first year of George W Bush's second term as US president. It had been four years since September 11, but Bush's "with us or against us" mentality, characterised in part by the Patriot Act, was still going strong.

It was, once again, a period in recent history when the media was as important as ever. Holding the powerful to account was a key theme in those sunny days before the post-truth present - the difference being that most people seemed to actually care about the truth back then, and relied on the media to get it for them. 

Good Night, And Good Luck was perfectly placed to play that classic card of an old story still being powerful in the present. Digging up the skeletons of McCarthyism and his Red Menace found them in surprisingly good shape, decked out in modern garb. The film's lead character, real-life journalist Edward R Murrow, and his 1950s quest for truth and justice powered by good old-fashioned journalism spoke loud and clear to the good folks of 2005.

Just as it speaks to today, or should, if folks were inclined to revisit this smoky black-and-white gem. Murrow's kiss-off, telling a gathering of media types that people get the media they deserve, remains as telling now as it did in 2005, and as it did in 1958.

"This instrument (television) can teach. It can illuminate, and yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent humans are willing to do so to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box."

Clooney knew his message would last, and he never labours it. Instead, he focused on making the most succinct and direct film of his career. It's just 90 minutes long, even with a superfluous b-plot romance, and snatches of jazz band performances and commercials to engrain us in the era. It rarely leaves the confines of the CBS TV studio and its offices. The home life of its characters is rarely seen or spoken of aside from the b-plot romantics. It's a contained time capsule that ticks away as a battle of wits, a tribute to journalistic courage, and, most of all, a morality play.

In between the ads for cigarettes and aluminium, and the jazz interludes, visible amid the relentless smoking, is a series of wonderfully quiet performances. The most bombastic is Langella, who's incredibly restrained for a media mogul.

Everyone is great, but Strathairn is the greatest. The bulk of the acting nominations for Good Night, And Good Luck went to him and rightfully so. It's one of those fantastically internal performances. A tilt of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, the tap of a foot - these moments hold multitudes, and Clooney rarely lingers on them, just capturing them long enough for us to know. 

Along with his cinematographer Robert Elswit and editor Stephen Mirrione, Clooney captures the characters and the newsroom in an artful and beautiful way. The camera roves and wanders, but it also sits and listens. It highlights quiet moments, but also drinks up the overlapping dialogue and the newsroom bustle.

It also has just enough tension in places to stir the pot. News of the death of a colleague is whispered, then revealed later. The journos and producers sit in silence, thinking they're in the clear after a particularly controversial broadcast, then realise the phones are still diverted. 

Good Night, And Good Luck belongs in the pantheon of great movies about journalism. It's quieter, subtler than All The President's Men and Spotlight, but its subject matter is just as important and its delivery is just as fitting. 

It's only that b-plot romance that lets it down, plus the occasional sense that the stakes aren't high enough, or that the personal toll on Murrow isn't being felt. That romance, while beautifully played by Clarkson and a rebounding Downey Jr., feels utterly redundant, despite obliquely tapping into the themes of secrecy. 

Clooney has some good films under his belt as director - Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Ides Of March and the under-rated Leatherheads for example - but this is his tightest and most powerful.