Good Night And Good Luck vs The Assassination Of Richard Nixon

A few years ago, there was a commercial for Diet Coke, with Paula Abdul dancing with Gene Kelly. It was probably fun, but it was also a little creepy and weird, since Gene Kelly was long dead, and it sparked a lot of talk about whether or not dead celebrities have rights and how long it might be before a dead celebrity was resurrected to be in a movie. Laurence Olivier was used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, so I guess the future is now. In Good Night, and Good Luck, the tactic is used again, but in a smarter, smoother, and I think fairer way. A few characters are played by themselves through archival news footage, but they're used for recreations of that actual footage. By not taking the players out of context, there's no transition to make, no creepiness to get around, no Diet Coke. It's pretty cool.

Good Night, and Good Luck is one of the more efficient movies I recall. It gets in, tells its story, and gets out. It operates on basically two sets, in black-and-white, during a crisp ninety minutes with a no-nonsense cast. Good Night, and Good Luck was directed by George Clooney. I watched Batman and Robin again the other night, and it's an even more garish mess that I'd remembered. I bet during filming, Clooney was fantasizing about making a movie where the only effects or accessories might be noirish swirls of cigarette smoke (I don't think cigarette smoke has been filmed this attractively since before movies were regularly in color).

Good Night, and Good Luck tells the story of the early days of televised news at CBS. George Clooney plays Fred Friendly, who produces the news anchored by Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn). The show is a mix of politics and celebrity, with the politics getting more and more play as the scare of Communism spreads throughout the country. Senator Joseph McCarthy is perhaps the greatest instigator of this scare (both the real and imaginary kinds), and Murrow believes he should be called to answer for his actions. In a series of newsroom scenes as tense and exciting as you can get without Joan Cusack crashing into a drinking fountain, Murrow, Friendly and the rest of the staff at CBS make their plot to put McCarthy on the news.

Of course, going after a Communist-hunter is likely to seem suspicious, causing paranoia and nervousness (and worse) among the crew. In a brilliant subplot, characters played by Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson appear to be the most worried about being labeled, and when they are, it's not for what they or us necessarily expect it to be, and I won't reveal it here, but it illustrates deftly how innocent people might act if they're in fear of being placed on life-jeopardizing lists. Downey and Clarkson are both great in small roles, with Clarkson especially right at home in black-and-white. She probably looked weird on the set with green lipstick or whatever, but in the finished product she practically glows.

David Strathairn is always good, and he's good here as well. I didn't have a mental image of Edward R. Murrow going into the film, so I can't tell you if Strathairn looks like the man or not. What I can tell you is that Straithairn brings so much integrity, gravity and intelligence to the part that it's no surprise watching him take a huge risk for his beliefs.

As a director, George Clooney surpasses the promise he showed with the inventive and underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Good Night, and Good Luck cannot have been an easy sell, and it's bound to have been a difficult screenplay to envision. Murrow's set is almost criminally small (he sits right next to a monitor, right next to a camera, without room to even move his cigarette out of frame), but this allows him to communicate with the rest of the staff, which he often does with a mere glance. Everything is framed beautifully, and even though there are stretches where we're basically just watching the news, Clooney keeps it popping with that live TV no-net stress that must have permeated every set (they shut the phones off in the newsroom during the broadcast). The movie is split into vague chapters, each of which is cued by a torch singer in a nearby studio (Diana Reeves). I'm not sure if any of the songs have significance beyond being a soundtrack of the time (although one is a subtle Mary Tyler Moore Show reference, and their common newsroom settings makes me think it might be intentional, in some random, IMDB kind of way), but Reeves has a lovely voice all the same.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon is also a movie about American history since the television age, but it's one that relies way more on drama than Good Night, and Good Luck. I've no doubt that something like the events in The Assassination of Richard Nixon happened, but let's just say there's not a lot of archival footage lying around to take the place of character actors (Randy Quaid would have been a fine Joseph McCarthy; I'm just saying.)

The Assassination of Richard Nixon tells the (true) story of Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn), a man of dwindling sanity, who tried to hijack a plane and kill President Nixon. His pre-hijack days and personal life have been embellished and probably largely created from scratch by The Assassination of Richard Nixon's crafty and upsetting screenplay. Samuel's marriage is over, he sucks at his job, and he's becoming angrier by the day. He'd love to do something proactive, like join the Black Panthers, but no one seems to understand his views. He wants a good job, and his wife back, but nothing works out. Sean Penn plays Samuel with such compassion and empathy he seems completely real, and I immediately started mentally cataloging all the Samuel-ish people I know.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon is part satire, part deadly-serious social commentary. It falls smack in the middle between Dick and Taxi Driver. It was directed by Niels Mueller with none of the visual edginess movies like this usually carry, but instead with a widescreen version of realism you see in movies from the 1970s. The subject matter is grand, in a way, but Mueller and Penn (and Naomi Watts, as Samuel's estranged wife) keep the show almost self-consciously human (Penn has a brief moment with a tree that is among the more heartbreaking of his career. Yes, a tree. Sean Penn's a good actor, kids.)

And if, unlike Good Night, and Good Luck, The Assassination of Richard Nixon doesn't back up its story with archival footage, and courtroom transcripts, and like, actual period cigarette commercials, well fine. A movie is a movie before it's anything else. Sometimes, as with Good Night, and Good Luck, we learn about the past to better understand our present, through facts and history (not to mention smooth jazz and good acting). Other times, like with The Assassination of Richard Nixon, whatever facts we get are just a bonus, alongside the confusing truths about humanity that usually only come from good old-fashioned fiction.

Good Night, and Good Luck: A
The Assassination of Richard Nixon: A-