Good night, and good luck
I went to see Good Night and Good Luck tonight at the Ambler Theater, and, after a long time, I remembered why I like cinema.
I loved the Ambler Theater. Scott and I had several frightening experiences in multiplex theaters and solemny promised to each other never to repeat the horror again (the screamingly loud stupid stream of ads, about 25 minutes of it, insulting to anybody who is older than 8; the poisonous popcorns that make you sick; the general atmosphere of video arcade; the feel of humiliation rather than of pleasure). So, we just don’t go to see movies in theaters; we much more enjoy the domestic Netflix experience. But small movie theaters are the real deal.
The Ambler theater is a beautiful space with good movies and special events. We noticed that there was an older crowd, and it was great. It felt like I was among my people.
Good Night, and Good Luck is a really good movie. Often movies that describe real events or people play like a disjoined sequence of vignettes; they want to cover too much in too little time and they loose depth and connection. Clooney’s movie is very tight. It describes a very specific and limited series of events and stays close to it. It takes time to focus on the details, the atmosphere, and the feelings. Of course, it has a strong an unapologetic message of social responsibility in difficult political times, but it’s also a very good movie. And David Strathairn is amazing as Edward Murrow.
A few additional observations:
- The 50s come to life not only in the beautiful black-and-white, the costumes, and the scenography, not only in the omnipresent cloud of cigarette smoke, but in all the little details like the eyeglasses with lenses made of glass (which, if you can believe it, were not anti-reflective, superlight, and UV filtered).
- Frank Langella’s Bill Paley demonstrates almost painfully how lonely it can be at the top, when you don’t share your power and everybody tries to work not with you but around you.
- The actors were not beautiful young actors; they looked like older, normal looking people (well, except George Clooney, of course). And I realized that because they seemed real and I could distinguish one from the other, I cared. Even when they showed up only for a scene, I cared. I cared about the secretary of Bill Paley, with the ugly 50s corporate dress and clunky shoes. I cared about each of the people who lived at the periphery of the screen and only had few lines.
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I felt similarly after seeing Capote at the Ritz downtown. It felt like an adult, cultural experience, not the cookie-cutter suburban plasticity of the mall theaters. And the movie was excellent … I want to see “Good Night” too.