Once upon a time, there was a man of integrity and insight who dared to speak out against a tyrant. The tyrant, who like most tyrants claimed to be acting in the best interests of the people, had launched a massive campaign whereby secret evidence and hearsay were used to accuse everybody in sight of being enemies of the state. Many innocent lives were ruined before the tyrant was called to account and relegated to the dustbin of history.
That's a brief rundown of actor-turned-director George Clooney's remarkable new film Good Night and Good Luck, a more-or-less true account of a pivotal moment in American politics. The story takes place in the middle of the last century, back at the dawn of the TV era, and the movie's man of integrity is that great American journalist, CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow.
The tyrant is, ostensibly, Joseph McCarthy, the U.S. Senator cum Witchhunter General who turned paranoia into the national pastime by smelling a Communist rat under every bed.
I use the word "ostensibly" because McCarthy could be anyone — George Bush, Nixon, Bill O'Reilly — virtually any past, present or future public figure who abuses the public trust by feeding the flames of demagoguery.
Good Night and Good Luck clearly has an axe or two to grind; the movie works as gripping drama, quality cinema and an important lesson in history, but Clooney lets it be known that what he's really showing us is a cautionary tale.
The film takes place in the mid-'50s, back when men were men and newscasters were allowed to have brains. Murrow was the king of this bunch, a proto-liberal media star (something of an Anti-O'Reilly) who spoke his mind and crusaded tirelessly for the truth, brow furrowed earnestly and a burning cigarette permanently wedged between his fingers.
Good Night and Good Luck charts the trajectory of Murrow's righteous indignation as McCarthy's increasingly abhorrent actions force the reporter to take a stand and put himself in jeopardy, using the public arena of his television show to expose the powerful and vindictive politician.
Clooney chose to shoot in black-and-white, a wise decision that lets us know that Good Night and Good Luck is art, too (and it does look beautiful), while blending seamlessly with the extensive archival footage of McCarthy incorporated into the film.
It's possible that James Gandolfini or maybe even Bob Hoskins could have captured McCarthy's Mussolini-esque swagger, but the decision to let McCarthy "play" McCarthy turns out to be a brilliant one. At various points in the movie, we get cleverly staged scenes in which David Strathairn, who plays Murrow, interacts with images of the actual McCarthy, creating riveting drama while subtly underscoring the intricate layering of reality and artifice that inevitably occurs in all corners of the media, from TV to cinema, whether it's owned up to or not.
On the down side, Good Night and Good Luck sometimes wears its politics too visibly on its sleeve, straining to emphasize how the Bush cabal and the O'Reilly factor echo words and deeds of McCarthy's goons half a century ago. And, just to complete the thought, it's likely that O'Reilly's nemesis, the famously liberal Clooney — not Strathairn — is the real stand-in for Murrow.
Good Night and Good Luck is elegant and accomplished filmmaking, but it's not above the occasional cheap shot. And when Clooney starts hinting at parallels between McCarthy's obsessive bullying and our current tough treatment of modern Jihadists, the movie is skating on thin ice.
After all, everybody knows Bush is a dope, but even dopes eventually get lucky and do something right. Hey, put an infinite amount of monkeys in a room with an infinite supply of laptops, eventually they'll write Good Night and Good Luck.
STEVE MARTIN IS A FAR CRY from a monkey with a laptop, although sometimes it might be more fun if he were. Shopgirl is Martin's much ballyhooed "serious" project, based on his novella (as if anybody writing a novella could be mistaken for anything but serious), and full of unrequited longing and flawed, disappointed characters.
In other words, Shopgirl is not exactly the hoot and a half you might have expected from this once and former comedian. The movie is basically another one of those mopey, middle-aged male fantasies in which an older man hooks up with a younger woman and the heart proceeds to want what the heart wants (a license-to-kill mantra so devastatingly effective I'm surprised Clinton didn't invoke it).
Martin plays the older man, a wealthy businessman named Ray, who pursues and lands the titular shopgirl, Mirabelle (Claire Danes), an aspiring artist who pays the rent by working behind the counter at Saks.
There's a scruffy young slacker in the romantic mix as well, amusingly played by Jason Schwartzman, although Shopgirl never makes much of the possibilities arising from those complications. Frankly, the movie only really comes alive when Schwartzman's character is on screen; the rest of the time it's just not all that interesting.
Shopgirl is beautifully crafted (what else would you expect from a director, Anand Tucker, who also produced The Girl with a Pearl Earring?) but not much happens. When curious little plot developments do emerge, they seem to come from nowhere and then, just as suddenly, disappear.
All of this presided over by a curiously stilted voice-over that periodically waxes poetic about destiny and the like, and an omnipresent musical score that works overtime to invest every action, no matter how tiny, with enormous weight.
There are some appealing moments here, and Danes is very good, but there's not much more to Shopgirl. Ultimately, the film is all about Martin's character, who's just a paler version of that same disaffected, unknowable, middle-aged guy Bill Murray's been playing recently. When the veil eventually lifts on Martin's character, though, he turns out to be so shallow and unlikable that the movie nearly falls apart.
Shopgirl clearly aims for high marks as "painfully honest" and "real," but it just winds up seeming sort of, well, creepy.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2005.