Happy 60th Birthday to one of 21st-century Hollywood's very few good guys. [In spite of his continuing support for the criminal organization known as the Democratic Party.]
In this nauseating MarvelComix movie era (going on 40 years now), to experience a classical liberal film is a bracing and uplifting experience. Works such as Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) were pretty much standard fair and what socially-sensitive filmgoers of the late-50s and early-60s would expect from Hollywood: Seven Days in May, Fail Safe, A Child is Waiting, Lilies of the Field, Anatomy of a Murder, Americanization of Emily, Manchurian Candidate, The Miracle Worker, Advise and Consent, Days of Wine and Roses -- but has been a genre so long ignored that it's heartbreaking to see it once more. People can, and should, treat each other decently -- that's the theme of the work. How revolutionary it now seems, when the face of U.S. power and culture appeals to the worst and assumes the very worst about humanity.
A chamber piece that believes its audience (probably a mistake) knows enough about the McCarthy Era to move right into the human element of the time, Good Night embodies the dream of good people working together doing good things; and it works so well because that's what director Clooney achieved on his set. All the actors are quiet, devoid of the usual ET narcissism, and one comes away aching for a group of co-workers doing serious things, treating each other with respect, and feeling safe about it all. (Another dream stolen from us by the corporate totalitarians.)
The picture has its flaws. Perhaps a brief prelude of what was going on in the early 1950s may have helped people jump into the human aspects more readily. (Stone did a great job of that with the Charlie Sheen-narrated prelude to JFK.) The subplot with the secretly-married Robert Downey, Jr (who's particularly good here, as usual) and Patricia Clarkson (who's not, as usual) should've been dumped. And replaced with much more background on the monstrous William Paley (Frank Langella). The director hints at where he could have gone, in the scene where Paley tells Ed Murrow: "I gave you that house of yours. I put your kids through school. I've given you everything you have." It is, of course, entirely the other way around. The Paleys of that world -- and especially in our own -- have what they have because of the blood of people like Murrow, Fred Friendly, Don Hollenbeck, and George Clooney. Paley's bellowing is exactly the way the vampire class always feels about itself. Which is why it must be destroyed. But now I'm arguing for a different kind of film. . .
A generous-hearted actor and director, what Clooney gives us remains special, with an opening as lovely as one of his aunt's songs.
