Skip to main content

Review: Good Night, And Good Luck

Let me say a few things about Clooney's fine grave depiction of CBS TV News and Edward R. Murrow.

1. I finally get the X-Files inversion with "The Smoking Man" - since Murrow was the original anti-conspiratorial government chain-smoking good guy.

2. Many of the scenes pay gentle homage to Kane. Especially the scene where Murrow types his "Shakesperean" riposte to McCarthy, which mirrors the Jedidiah is too drunk to write a glowing review scene.

3. How old is Frank Langella? He is superb at this stage of his careeer.

4. Murrow's tragedy is reflected in his smoking. Just as the man at the heart of TV condemns its cancerous corruption by tocix corporate control, he chain-smokes the Kents he peddles to stay on the (polluted) air. His insight, that TV is just wires and lights without ethics and social concern, fails to get to the heart of the problem: TV is just a delivery system for commodities and commodification. Murrow, who knew what communism was and avoided its solutions, ironically misdiagnosed his own condition - TV can never be improved so long as the capitalist society that directs its broadcasts remains a system for maximixing profit at the expense of the social good.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".