Good Night and Good Luck

Good Night and Good Luck at its core is about the exposing of Joseph McCarthy’s indecent acts during a supposed communist investigation. This film is very different for a lot of reasons, the main ones being its aesthetic choices. For one, it is all in black in white, and two the sound design. The way in which we are removed from the conversations, the moments, and are left to fill in the blanks and use our imaginations is a truly great experience.

The most obvious instance is right in the beginning. We are peering into a dinner party where the main character has to deliver a speech. We are being shown people laughing and having drinks, as smoke is thrown into the air, but we are not privileged to any specific conversation. Each time this barrier was shown, we were listening to a song from the era being recorded live.  This creates an interesting barrier. I mean there’s always a barrier in film and the way in which each filmmaker decides to handle it often changes the feel of the movie. For instance with this movie this allows us to be immediately thrown into the past, we are looking through a time portal of sorts. This greatly fits with the movie because it is a recreation of a historical event with real news clips intertwined. The Coen brothers, for example, do the opposite of this by placing us in the middle of everything. We almost look at the world through a character’s eyes. The camera is placed in between two people when there’s a conversation throwing us right into the action instead of us peering in like in so many films such as this one.

There were also times where we’d be looking at a character and they’re reviewing a conversation in their head. We see them going about their activities, as they replay prior events. At least that is my interpretation. In a strange way we are still removed because we are not actually seeing anyone talk. Just like before how we are only given visual this time we are only given audio. It is an interesting format, one which forces us to pay attention. We have to fill in the gaps. For just the audio we have to imagine how they looked, how they visually reacted, and for just visual we try to figure out what they’re saying. This weird style separates Good Night and Good Luck from most media.