Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I love being surprised.
I just hate waiting for it.
That says probably all you ever need to know to really understand me. I know I’ve been responsible for leaking more than a few spoilers in my day, but that doesn’t change the fact that I like being surprised, especially in a movie theater. Crazy, huh? It still happens all the time, too. If it didn’t happen, I’d stop going to see movies. I’d figure I was hopelessly burnt out. In the last few weeks, I’ve had several surprises in the theater that, taken cumulatively, have reminded me of how that makes you feel.
When I first heard the premise for GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, it sounded like liberal porn to me. I mean, come on... Murrow versus McCarthy? With George Clooney starring? Immediately, I imagined the most obvious Oscar-bait. When I finally saw it at a special screening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an evening to honor USC’s Annenburg School of Journalism, even the set-up screamed “this is important!” When the lights went down, I braced myself for what I was going to see...
...and realized I was completely wrong.
Working from a script he co-wrote with Grant Heslov, Clooney created a well-reasoned, sober, thoughtful film about a moment in our pop culture history that is defining, although not in the ways it initially seems. Edward R. Murrow was as well-respected as any newsman of the television age. He earned his credibility. His broadcasts from London during WWII are legendary for good reason. It would be simplistic to suggest, though, that Murrow or any newsman could single-handedly topple a political figure as prominent as Senator Joseph McCarthy. Wisely, Clooney’s film doesn’t even attempt to make that claim, and don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. Chances are they haven’t actually seen it.
Instead, the film opens and closes with Murrow (played by David Strathairn, dryer than a ‘50’s martini) speaking to a broadcaster’s association banquet. He delivers this speech to them, which is really more like an indictment of the entire industry and the direction he sees it going. Even though he speaks in the same measured way that he speaks in all of his broadcasts, Murrow’s fury is evident. He sees the eventual corruption of network news by commercial interests as inevitable, but worth fighting for as long as possible. By framing the story that way, Clooney lets you know what his film is really about: personal responsibility. Murrow wasn’t the first person who spoke out against McCarthy’s tactics and results, and he wasn’t the last. There was no moment where the two of them went head-to-head like the end of A FEW GOOD MEN, Murrow finally bullying McCarthy into some sort of confession of wrongdoing. In fact, there’s no direct interaction between the two of them in the film at all. Instead of making Murrow a superhero, Clooney shows that by choosing to add his name to the growing list of media figures standing up to McCarthy, Murrow did several things. He forced CBS News to pick a side, to editorialize, something that ad-revenue-dependent TV was loath to do. Murrow did it because he knew what good copy it made. He knew McCarthy would attack him. He knew McCarthy would call him un-American. And he knew that a nation still able to remember those London broadcasts would never believe that. Or at least, he hoped they wouldn’t. He gambled, and by putting his reputation on the line, he helped push things in the right direction. Edward R. Murrow did not defeat Joseph McCarthy. But he was certainly part of the process, and that alone makes the story worth telling.
Shooting the film in black-and-white is a strong choice. I can’t help but think of the ‘50s as a black-and-white era. What it really does is allow Clooney to use only real footage of McCarthy in the film. All of that footage is in black & white, so it blends into the reality Clooney creates. Robert Elswit is a great cinematographer. His work with Paul Thomas Anderson blows me away every time I revisit PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE or BOOGIE NIGHTS or MAGNOLIA. He’s lit this film to look like the richest creamiest smoky B&W possible. Clooney’s got a really nice style here, the model of restraint. His supporting cast (Frank Laugella, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Ray Wise) all do solid work, not one person showboating. There’s no score, but there are musical interludes with jazz singer Diana Reeves and a quartet just letting fly. It’s another great choice in a film that’s packed full of them.
I had a choice on Wednesday night between two different press screenings, and I’m a little bit ashamed of the choice I made. I could have gone to see THE PASSENGER, the Antonioni film starring Jack Nicholson that Sony Pictures classics is re-releasing to theaters next weekend. Instead, I went to the Avco in Westwood for a 7 PM show of DOOM. It was just an issue of mood. I didn’t want to see anything demanding. After last week and DOMINO, I was even sort of hoping it was terrible so I could disagree with Harry again.
Except...another surprise. DOOM doesn’t suck. And, yes, you can quote me on the poster saying so. “DOOM doesn’t suck.”
Sci-fi movie surprises can be the best. For example, if you saw TERMINATOR or PREDATOR or ROBOCOP on video for the first time, then you can’t understand just how surprising they were. By the time they reached video, they were already hits. When it hit screens just before Christmas in 1984, TERMINATOR was a nothing little low-budget film, starring a body builder whose movie career already appeared to be declining and directed by the guy who made PIRANHA 2: THE SPAWNING. PREDATOR looked like cookie-cutter junk from the ad campaign, something about a monster killing soldiers in the jungle, again starring that same body builder after several years of movies that squan—the goodwill he earned on TERMINATOR. ROBOCOP had one of the cheesiest posters of all time. Everyone who worked at the theater where I worked spent six months laughing at that over-earnest ad line: “PART MAN. PART MACHINE. ALL COP.”
But in the theater... wow. All three are textbook examples of how something can surprise you if you let it. By now, these movies are practically hard-wired into the DNA of any fan of the genre. TERMINATOR was pure adrenaline. PREDATOR mixed tough guy machismo and the structure of a slasher movie to excellent effect. And ROBOCOP... well... ROBOCOP was so incredibly smart and subversive and gleefully filthy that it became habit-forming.
DOOM is not as good as any of those three movies, so don’t overinflate your hopes. It is fun, though, which is far more than I would have believed after reading an early draft. It moves, it tries to balance its identities as an action movie and a horror movie and does a decent job at both. The opening scene, from the moment the Universal logo circles Mars instead of Earth to the actual main title about five minutes later, sets the tone right away. The Rock plays nicely against expectation as Sarge, the guy in command of the special forces team that gets called in when the shit goes down on Mars. There’s nothing deep about this film. It’s not satire, and there’s no subtext to speak of. It’s not any better structurally than, say, the RESIDENT EVIL movies. It’s the details that make the difference, the overall approach to the material. Even though there aren’t enough monsters for my taste, there are a few that really work. In particular, there’s one that looks like a big white maggot with wheels that just made me cackle. Can we get that thing a spin-off? DOOM has some great moments, some great scares, and a real sense of humor about itself. Consistering how bad video game adaptations are in general, even that much comes as a tremendous surprise.
And like I said... I love being surprised.
Now maybe I can pull a few surprises of my own and post that Cronenberg interview and a few other overdue pieces, as well as a big batch of DVD reviews. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
