May 1, 2007

Good Night and Good Luck

What struck me about this film is the simplicity of the story. George Clooney got a lot of recognition for making this film but he didn't do anything amazing. He mainly exploited the essence of documentary in order to make the film seem more real. His decisions for simplicity were good, and he definitly shouldn't have made the film any other way, but I'm not sure why he got all the recognition that he did. The real reason it was a good movie was the fact that it was true.

2 comments:

Cait Davis said...

I think there are deeper things going on in the film than that. And plenty of 'true' films are garbage.

The technical aspects of the film are pretty impressive(ex. the way the live television news casts are shot, interchanging the monitors with the film cameras, etc.) And the script is well written.

In every film the writer, director, etc. goes through the process of choosing what moments to highlight and in what way to highlight those moments. George Clooney did a classy job of making these choices.

Rachel Playe said...

I agree with Cati, the reasons why nothing really stood out in the film is because he made a seamless piece of cinema. Besides constructing a well made movie, writing, acting, lighting ect, he weaved together archival footage and re-enactment so well it just fit. I think a reason the film was so popular was people feel like they come away from the piece knowing more about history. Also, people identified with the times the film dealt with and perhaps missed that level of journalism.