Good Night, and Good Luck Film Reaction

When Dr. Smith gave us the opportunity to watch this film in class, it provided me with a new outlook on our history.

“We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.”

 -David Strathairm (Edward R. Murrow), Good Night, and Good Luck.

I decided to start my reaction to this film with this direct quote because this stood out to me more than anything during the film, and made me think about the context on a deeper level.  In my opinion, this means that in our history, we can't change anything that happened. What happened, has happened, and all we SHOULD do is accept it, even if it's not what we want. We can pretend it didn’t happen, but we can’t expect to push the outcomes away, we have to deal with it and work with it to move forward. 

Good Night, and Good Luck is an award-winning film directed by George Clooney in October of 2005. It is a historical drama in an ugly political period about CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, played by  David Strathairm, attempting to defeat Senator Joseph McCarthy because of his campaign against communists in the U.S to “sway” journalism. Through the duration of this film, Murrow is backed up by his news team, especially his producer Fred Friendly, played by George Clooney. The whole CBS news team does everything in their power to get under McCarthy’s skin by attempting to expose him and point out all of his lies and manipulation behind the scenes. Overall, the film concludes with Murrow saying this iconic line, which created the title of the film, “Good Night, and Good Luck”. In my opinion, this was said by Murrow to leave an impact to viewers foreshadowing his “signing off” sarcastically reporting good luck.  The many actions of the CBS network in this film set an example for journalism, and set a standard of what is necessary while reporting.