I went to see George Clooney's film about Ed Murrow & the McCarthyite witch hunt of the early 1950s. One of the interesting features of this film is the fact that it is black & white, probably because there is quite a few 'inserts' from contemporary TV & film pieces - featuring the anti-communist senator & Liberace amongst others. I didn't realise the lack of colour once the film got under way. I know quite a bit about this period of American history and I'm not sure whether this film contributed very much to my knowledge. So I was quite disappointed by the lack of political invective. There were two memorable parts to the film. One was the interogation of Mrs Moss - an African American recently employed in the code room of the pentagon. She clearly looked bewildered by the accusations of Communist sympathies. This indicated the level of desperation by Senator McCarthy and his cohorts to carry a hysterical crusade against a supposed enemy within. (Was this supposed to be a comment on current American/western Islamaphobia?) The second scene was a speech (Eisenhower possibly?) praising habeas corpus as the bulwark against detention without charge or trial. I suppose this was aimed at Guantanamo Bay and the appalling continuing indefinite detention of the alleged 'war criminals/terrorists'.
Rating out of 10? 7 perhaps. Brokeback still gets a 10 from me.
Next week Capote.
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