George Clooney's Good Night And Good Luck is very nearly a great film about a subject matter that is great indeed. It has its limitations, but it works within them so well that it would be easy to call the picture a masterpiece. It isn't, but then again, what is a masterpiece? A perfect film, or a film that achieves a presupposed level of perfection? This is a film that works perfectly on its own terms, and while a better film might one day be made about Edward R. Murrow, it can in no way diminish what this one does accomplish.

It is important to note that Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov do not tackle the issue of McCarthyism with this film, and to consider that they do not need to. No issue is ever black and white, of course, but there are those that can afford to be portrayed subjectively, and I think this is one of them. This justified limitation extends to the context of the film, which is set almost entirely in the newsrooms where heroes are made of the anchors who stand up the witch-hunts. This is scarcely a warts-and-all true story; indeed, the film effectively lionizes Edward R. Murrow, whose only vice seems to be a fondness for a glass of scotch after a hard day's work.

One might contend that within the confines of this scope is a microcosm of the entire era, in which Murrow (David Strathairn, in a performance that itself deserves to be lionized) represents everyone who stood up to McCarthy, while fellow anchor Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise) stands for all those whose lives were ruined by the blacklisting. That's a viable interpretation, but I really don't think the film is structured to shoulder it too squarely. There's too much detail, too much fact for the film to work on that level. By using actual footage of McCarthy and letting him speak in his own words, Clooney is presenting him not as a movement but as a man - a sniveling, contemptuous man - with whom Murrow spars head to head. What this film is, simply, is a celebration of Murrow's courage. And indeed, he was an American hero, and McCarthy was a villain, and while any reasonable person will understand that in real life such a delineation is infinitely more grey than the movie makes it out to be, the clear distinction serves the film's purposes.

Where, then, does the film fall short of greatness? I think it has more to do with our modern perceptions of what a great film can accomplish than any real shortcomings on Clooney's part. He has made a distinctly old fashioned film, the type which, had it been made in 1953 rather than set in it, would probably have starred Gary Cooper. This is not an intimate epic (there are no exterior shots, nothing to put the newsroom into perspective). The character of Don Hollenbeck is a tragic one, but he provides no tension (if one cannot be a hero in these circumstances, than he or she must be a victim, and therefore Hollenbeck is merely a device by which to solidify Murrow's heroism and McCarthy's villainy). Murrow never falters in dedication (when another anchor, played by Robert Downey Jr., asks his wife if she's sure they're on the right side, she dismisses him with a gentle laugh). There simply isn't room in Clooney's vision (and, perhaps, in his budget, although I suspect there was little disparity between the two) for such subtle shadings. Although its style and tone is beautifully restrained, this is no more a docudrama than Clooney's debut picture, the surreal Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.

Good Night And Good Luck presents a heightened reality, the sort that memory and cinema both foster, in which moral distinctions are clear and is is possible for good men to be personified entirely by their great deeds. There's reason to criticize the film for limiting itself to this perspective, but I have to admit that, given the subject matter, I found it pretty damn invigorating.