I watched the Oscars last night, and was rather ticked off when Good Night, and Good Luck got skunked. It was a great film, in my opinion, and carries an extremely important message at the present moment.
I was even more annoyed once I found out something else about CBS's Edward R. Murrow: When he wasn't busy taking on Joe McCarthy, he took time out to broadcast from a flight into Hurricane Edna, in 1954. Apparently the broadcast included this deeply memorable quotation:
In the eye of a hurricane, you learn things other than of a scientific nature. You feel the puniness of man and his works. If a true definition of humility is ever written, it might well be written in the eye of a hurricane.
Now that's great journalism. Maybe with an experience like this under his belt, Murrow didn't find Hurricane McCarthy quite so intimidating....
- Log in to post comments
"Good night and good luck" is a very good movie, but somewhat lacking in the Oscar-winning qualities. I'd say that one could find a moment or two when the tension is lacking, for instance. It is a very quiet movie. I would fare better on some European film festival, probably.
I thought all three of the nominated movies that I saw (Capote, Brokeback Mountain, and Good Night, and Good Luck) were great, but if there was any "upset" I'd liked to have seen, it would have been David Strathairn winning Best Actor.
In agreement with Roman Werpachowski in his assessment of the film, good, but Oscar? Well, picking favorites is really another matter, and besides, that's really not so much the issue, as were the times it described (then and even now), the state of the news media (then and now), the caliber of journalism (then and now). What I found amazing was the use of Murrow's speech at that testimonial dinner to bookend the movie, so prescient. I'm sure it was taken verbatim, and it would be worthwhile to run a search on it and read it again.
I'm afraid that for me this is a case of "if you want to send a message, call Western Union".
Good Night and Good Luck just had too much sermonising about it. For a truly great artistic take on McCarthyism try The Crucible instead.
I liked the concept behind "Good night and good luck", but I thought something was lacking as well. It didn't seem well paced. The good moments were good, but on the whole it didn't hang together as well as it should have.
But given today's easily-cowed press, the theme is certainly topical. George Clooney deserves credit for the attempt, at least (even if it turned out a bit didactic in the end).
By the way, I bet Edward R. Murrow would have appreciated this program on the Sophoclean-dramatic aspects of the Hurricane Katrina debacle: http://www.radioopensource.org/the-redemption-of-michael-brown/
I found the movie to be one big flag-waving, Constitution-citing piece of Americanism. I wish it had won.
The gloating of conservative bloggers that it didn't win is petty, and anti-American, to me.