From that odd encounter to the kinescopes of the Army-McCarthy hearings, Good Night, and Good Luck brilliantly recreates the milieu of early television. (Robert Elswit's smoky cinematography and Stephen Mirrione's suave, snappy editing are crucial to this accomplishment.) It also captures, better than any recent movie I can think of, the weirdly hermetic atmosphere of a news organization at a time of crisis.
Nearly all the action takes place inside CBS headquarters (or at the bar where its employees drink after hours), which gives the world outside a detached, almost abstract quality. A telephone rings, an image flickers on a screen, a bulldog edition of the news-paper arrives -- this is what it means for information to be mediated.
But its effects are nonetheless real. While the camera never follows Friendly or Murrow home from the office, and the script never delves into psychology, we see how the climate of paranoia and uncertainty seeps into the lives of some of their co-workers. Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise), an anchor for the New York CBS affiliate, is viciously red-baited by a newspaper columnist, and Joe and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson) skulk around the office like spies (though for reasons that have more to do with office politics than with national security). When Murrow, in March 1954, prepares to broadcast his expose of McCarthy's methods, the suspense is excruciating, even if we know the outcome.
Because we do, it is possible to view Good Night, and Good Luck simply as a reassuring story of triumph. But the film does more than ask us, once again, to admire Murrow and revile McCarthy. That layer of the story is, as it should be, in stark black-and-white, but there is a lot of gray as well, and quite a few questions that are not so easily resolved. The free press may be the oxygen of a democratic society, but it is always clouded by particles and pollutants, from the vanity or cowardice of individual journalists to the impersonal pressures of state power and the profit motive.
And while Clooney is inclined to glorify, he does not simplify. The scenes between Murrow and Paley, taking place in the latter's cryptlike office, have an almost Shakespearean gravity, and not only because Strathairn and Langella perform their roles with such easy authority. McCarthy may serve as the hissable villain, but Paley is a more complicated foil for Murrow -- at once patron, antagonist and protector. (Addressed by everyone else, in hushed tones, as "Mr. Paley," he is "Bill" only to Murrow.)
Most of the discussion of this movie will turn on its content -- on the history it investigates and on its present-day resonance. This is a testament to Clooney's modesty (as is the fact that, on screen, he makes himself look doughy and pale), but also to his skill. Over the years he has worked with some of the smartest directors around, notably Joel Coen and Steven Soderbergh (who is an executive producer of this film). And while he has clearly learned from them, the cinematic intelligence on display in this film is entirely his own. He has found a cogent subject, an urgent set of ideas and a formally inventive, absolutely convincing way to make them live on screen.
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