Better late than never, I saw Good Night, and Good Luck tonight. George Clooney does a great job directing, capturing the bustling essence of a newsroom well and giving excruciating attention to the details of the period set design. I like how meticulously the character of Edward R. Murrow (played with unflappable resolve by David Strathairn) picks away in his televised commentary at McCarthy’s bluster until the senator is reduced, mumbling and bowed at his censure hearing, to deflecting questions like, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
There are some obvious parallels between the movie’s portrayal of McCarthyism and the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” elements of our current political climate, as well as the general state of TV today and Murrow’s public damnation of his own medium as fostering an insular world of frivolous entertainments:
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.