This film really rubbed me the wrong way. Observe:
Good Night, and Good Luck is a loathsome film, a snarling insult to the intellect of anyone who lies on the political right of Karl Marx. One that hawks the corrupt notion that an individual journalist knows more about the world than every politician, general, doctor, policeman, fireman, clergyman, college professor, and average Joe put together. Director George Clooney has crafted a film that is toThe New York Times what a porno movie is to Paul Reubens. Clooney should count himself lucky that his side of the political isle, not the other, gets cathartic release from throwing custard pies at their enemies (women in particular), otherwise he could scarcely leave his $12 million Italian villa without receiving his dessert early.
This atrocity follows Ed Murrow (David Stratharin) and his staff’s quest to bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney, completely lacking even a grain of shame, shoots the film’s heroes with ten times the love and respect that Spielberg gave the citizen soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, and no one in Good Night, and Good Luck ever faces physical danger. Murrow strides throughout the 50’s era sets, so smug in his natural genius and God given correctness on every issue that he foregoes having to explain or argue a single issue, but why should he? As a journalist, he knows everything, and is never wrong(see Memogate for an example of where this attitude leads in real life).
For a film with more pompous lectures on integrity than I have fingers and toes, it displays astonishing boldness through a total disregard for legitimate debate and dismissive stance towards historical accuracy. Clooney here argues that the Cold War was nothing more than a hysterical Republican farce, which all of the smart liberals like him and Murrow knew was trash. McCarthy is portrayed as a would be Hitler, gleefully trampling on the rights of liberals as Godzilla would stomp through Tokyo. McCarthy is so evil, to paraphrase Ann Coulter, Manhattan becomes unsafe to travel through for fear of corpses raining from the towers, fresh suicides courtesy of the mental distress the junior Senator from Wisconsin has wrought.
Since a conservative Republican won the Cold War, the ‘Cold War Farce’ argument has become the rage amongst liberals in the past decade, with Adolf McCarthy being one of, if not the, mastermind of the Republican effort to deceive people into voting for them. Good Night, and Good Luck forgets to mention that McCarthy never violated the constitutional rights of a single person, and that while a few screenwriters partied in Paris for a few years because Communism wasn’t in style in the USA, people in the Ukraine ate their shoes. McCarthy was an opportunist and a complete liar, but Holocaust 2.0 he wasn’t. Did I mention that Soviet spies did exist?
Shot in black and white, Clooney obviously hired a skilled cinematographer, though he might have chosen someone other than himself to write it. By the third jazz montage in 70 minutes, I found myself longing for the glory days of Michael Moore, because at least that disgusting liar knows how to edit, and bothers to erect faux defenses. Like his characters, Clooney doesn’t even feel the need to explain himself to the common trash he supposedly cares about.
Clooney, a notoriously mean spirited socialist windbag, even has the nerve to have Murrow directly lecture the audience at the end, telling us that we are fat, stupid, and need to listen. Ah, but listen to who? Why, the liberal media of course! A room full of philosophy professors watching the entire Sorkin years of The West Wing could only hope to be so pompous while having a depth equal to that of a children’s pool.
The notion of the liberal media as the sole purveyor of justice in the world has rightfully come under blistering assault over the past few years, with men like Clooney screaming bloody murder as their monopoly on information comes crashing down. Only in this perverse way does Good Night, and Good Luck offer any comfort, as an unintentional portrait of men who use the news to recklessly push their own political agendas, eventually becoming so mired in their self-righteousness that they fail to notice they signing themselves off to the dreaded trash heap of history. Who said we shouldn’t shoot garbage into space?
0 out of 5
My liberal friends: Where am I wrong? Am I wrong? This film was so far to the left I was shocked; it could have been funded by the Politburo. Even if you agree with the politics of it, didn't the whole thing seem phony and dishonest? I've hated most of the right-wing films I've seen, because they substitute shock arguments and hyperbole for reasonable discourse.
Just because you and the filmmaker may vote the same way doesn't mean you have to subscribe to his methods, but whenever a liberal film is released, the critics heap it with praise and Oscar talk (exception: The Life and Death of David Gale). While I'll certainly be accused of only disliking the film because I'm not a liberal, by the same logic, shouldn't we disregard the opinions of any liberals who like the film?
4 comments:
You seriously thought Doom was a better film?
Mystery person,
I would argue that GNGL is much better made than Doom, but I despised the politics of GNGL so much that I gave it an even lower score.
Like I note in my review, Doom is so lazy that it is hard for me to hate it. Ultimately, I score these based on my feelings towards the film, and I can not award GNGL a decent score simply because it was photographed well.
I never saw this film, and after reading your review, I don't really intend to unless I have a communist friend who insists I watch it with them. Then, I would only watch it because I am curious to know what you would think is such a terrible movie (politically speaking). Interesting side note, I met a Vietnamese exchange student here, and judging by the way she talks about politics (though I haven't heard too much because we've only spoken twice), I would wager her dad was a leader for the VC or something. The girl is really beautiful though.
Anyway, if you already read my comment on "29" (which by the way I wrote with no knowledge about this review) I would guess that this is another example of how liberals are getting frustrated, but in their zeal to be heard are only making the problem worse by producing media that basically says nothing more than "Republicans suck".
Well, I guess most people are not as intelligent or level-headed as we would hope. Based on your review, it certainly seems George Clooney needs to be reminded of the purpose of multiple political parties.
I will say that I think the 50s politicians were disgustingly paranoid towards communism and hundreds of thousands of American lives were spent needlessly on wars that served seemingly little more purpose than to satisfy that paranoia. Communism didn't work, and it died largely due to its own ineffectiveness without the help of America. Locking horns with Russia in an arms race would have been enough but they had to go that extra mile in Korea and Vietnam. Though I certainly am no history expert. Forgive me if I have been misinformed.
I'm quite late on this but was going through the backlog once again as I'm very bored at work.
The only thing I can really say is that a conservative republican didn't win the cold war. I'm not saying he didn't help, but Reagan gets held up like some sort of Commando-style political superman who wiped the floor with communism.
In reality he was the end of what all the presidents since Truman had been doing, slowly intimidating and attempting to outspend the other superpower.
In the end, the Soviet Union fell under the weight of it's own corruption. Did Reagan hasten it's fall? Maybe by a couple of weeks and I'm sure the residents of Leningrad thank him for the extra borscht he made possible.
McCarthy shows us what happens when we scrap the judicial system in favor of a witch hunt, like the experiments which have come out in Guantanamo.
Was McCarthy evil? I don't know, I never met him. In all likelyhood he believed that he was doing the right thing in the same way that Morrow smugly believed himself to be in the right.
I think that this issue (McCarthyism, not evil) is an especially touchy subject for Hollywood which felt the sting a little bit more than Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Taxpayer. It seems to me that this could be the reason for the portrayal of Wisconsin's freshman senator rather than Clooney's liberal leanings (though these probably didn't hurt).
In reality, the media does need a wake up. Too often it idly sits by waiting for the hand of government to toss it a bone. What ever happened to afflicting the comforted and comforting the afflicted?
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