Good Night, and Good Luck Understanding Anything about Edward R. Murrow
Ah, life. Sometimes the writing I actually have to do gets in the way of my blogging. Hence, no entries for the past week or two, and I have a lot of catching up to do.
The problem with delaying an entry until a few days after you see something is that you can’t quite recapture the excitement of your initial reaction.
But the Mink has been begging for a rant on Good Night and Good Luck so that she can—and I quote—“write a scathing rebuttal.” So I must oblige. Fortunately, I saved a copy of an email I sent to another friend the morning after Porpoise and I watched the film:
We watched Good Night and Good Luck last night and thought it was one of the snobbiest movies we’d ever seen. I’m something of an inconsistent populist, and the movie seemed completely inaccessible if you didn’t know anything about the McCarthy era. It just drops you in in medias res and expects you to know what’s going on, and it doesn’t give you a point of entry through the characters–you don’t find out anything about them, either, and you don’t end up caring much about them. It couldn’t “educate,” and it sure couldn’t entertain much either. To us, it seemed like it would only appeal to those who like to be preached at about things they already believe. I don’t like McCarthy, I don’t like the Patriot Act, I don’t like the vapidity of much American media, but hey, I also don’t like a boring movie telling me how bad all these things are.
That’s what I said then. I still feel the same way—I just care less now. But I have enjoyed quizzing various friends on why they liked the movie (because everyone but me and Porpoise seems to). It’s been an illustration about, when looking at exactly the same thing, how vastly different the responses of insightful people can be.
For example, we found many of the subplots—such as the one with the secretly married couple working for CBS—distracting and extraneous. Yes, their fear of discovery paralleled the general climate of fear at the time, but it seemed unnecessary. Other friends, however, found the movie’s structure elegant in its “spareness.”
We did see spareness when it came to understanding Edward R. Murrow and his motivation for doing the series of critical broadcasts on McCarthy. We saw his on-air speeches, but we didn’t really know what was driving him to make them—he seemed a pretty reserved guy when off camera. Now, the Mink, as a person with theater training, was impressed with the acting style, and maybe if I knew more about acting, I would have enjoyed picking up information about Murrow from his little tics. While watching the movie, I said to myself several times, “Oh, look—the way he’s licking his lips means that he’s nervous,” but that was about the extent of details I could pick up about his character. Again, maybe that’s because I’m just not a visual person.
Of course, the visual elements were a big part of why many people laud the movie. It was nominated for Oscars in both Art Direction and Cinematography, though it didn’t win. The black-and-white is nice, and the clouds of smoke are atmospheric . . . but I’ll let the Mink tell you more about that in her rebuttal.
Now, I should explain that when, in the above email segment, when I faulted the movie for neither educating nor entertaining, I didn’t actually expect it to educate in a purely factual or didactic way. The only reason I even considered the educational purpose was Murrow’s speech at the end of the film, in which he asked what would happen if, instead of watching the Ed Sullivan show, Americans tuned in to a program on history or current political issues. He seemed to believe that media should educate, so I found it ironic that Good Night and Good Luck didn’t practice what Murrow preached.
However, the Mink mentioned that she, knowing next to nothing about McCarthy, didn’t find the movie confusing at all. Porpoise suggested that maybe, in some ways, it actually helps to know less about the McCarthy era, because then the events of the movie have a stronger causal tie to each other: it makes it seem more like Murrow single-handedly brought down McCarthy (which, as a friend who studies history pointed out, is not the case—in fact, Murrow only went at McCarthy once he was already in decline).
All right, my dear semi-aquatic weasel, you may now rebut away. (And all you readers keep in mind that otters and minks are both members of the family Mustellidae–meaning that we have musk glands–and we love each other dearly, in spite of aesthetic disagreements.)
One more thing: Edward R. Murrow’s real name was Egbert Roscoe Murrow. I am not making this up.
Add comment May 6th, 2006