Broadcast News
I wasn’t sure whether this film would be badly dated, and was pleased to find many things in it still work—most especially the scenes behind-the-scenes, putting the news together. The sequence where Hurt’s Tom G gets his moment with a major story, and Holly Hunter’s Jane talks him through it is terrific, and the film is enjoyable, but there are times when the script and direction seem a little heavy handed. Talking about ethics in media, the reporters talk about what they would or wouldn’t do—the answers are perhaps designed to shock, but the questions seem pretty tame. “Would you tell a source you loved them?” Absolutely they all answer. Would a genuine source believe them? That’s what I’d like to know more.
The problem with this movie now is partly that the ethical questions seem almost quaint, and partly that the hairstyles are so bad. Okay—that’s being too flippant. But at the same time, it falls into a period in American movies that seems somehow hard to take seriously. It falls mid to late eighties, just after the emergence of teen movies as a law unto themselves, and in a period when Spielberg was still the name of cinemas golden boy. (Tell me truthfully, do people still get excited when Spielberg’s name is attached to a project.) Broadcast News is the product of James L Brooks: I haven’t seen his “critically acclaimed” Terms of Endearment—I’ve been avoiding the task. So maybe next week I’ll sit down and eat my words, in an attempt at revisionism. The truth is, I feel this could have been a more interesting journalistic movie, the way “Welcome to Sarajevo” was interesting. Instead you get a bit of the pace of a producing the news from time to time, and stabs at a complex relationship between the three leads who are stuck in a love triangle: the good reporter loves the girl, and she in turn is horrified to find that she loved the handsome anchorman who doesn’t know the background to the stories he’s presenting.
I think the movie has trouble making up its mind what we’re meant to think of these characters—that should be a good thing, right? Complicated, fleshed out, flawed people. But they’re not that. You plainly aren’t meant to dislike any of them, even when they’re in conflict with each other. Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks are a little too idealistic: they’ve got to throw out the rose coloured glasses. William Hurt is self-effacing, and though he’s a faker, though he ultimately talks about the news and the news broadcaster as commodities to be sold, he’s genuine in faking it. And you can tell he’s going to succeed, because he’s so damn palatable—he doesn’t have that aroma of elitism that surrounds the other two.
I think the reason I’m in two minds about this film is that I enjoyed it, and was willing to co-operate with its moments of shallowness until the entirely unnecessary, and—I think—badly judged “seven years later” roundup at the end. Somehow sexual politics had fairly successfully been left out of the thing until then—impressive in a film ultimately about sex and about politics. Joan Cusack, ever there to provide a light moment, earlier says to Jane “you’re my idol, in everything but your personal life.” And smack, it gets driven home. It was a pity to suddenly find a bad taste in the mouth over a film I’d had a decent showing of goodwill towards only moments before. I don’t think I can even blame it on Hollywood—maybe I’m giving that town more credit that it deserved with the benefit of another 15 years having passed, but frankly I feel that Hollywood was ready for a better ending. So instead I just ask—why?
The problem with this movie now is partly that the ethical questions seem almost quaint, and partly that the hairstyles are so bad. Okay—that’s being too flippant. But at the same time, it falls into a period in American movies that seems somehow hard to take seriously. It falls mid to late eighties, just after the emergence of teen movies as a law unto themselves, and in a period when Spielberg was still the name of cinemas golden boy. (Tell me truthfully, do people still get excited when Spielberg’s name is attached to a project.) Broadcast News is the product of James L Brooks: I haven’t seen his “critically acclaimed” Terms of Endearment—I’ve been avoiding the task. So maybe next week I’ll sit down and eat my words, in an attempt at revisionism. The truth is, I feel this could have been a more interesting journalistic movie, the way “Welcome to Sarajevo” was interesting. Instead you get a bit of the pace of a producing the news from time to time, and stabs at a complex relationship between the three leads who are stuck in a love triangle: the good reporter loves the girl, and she in turn is horrified to find that she loved the handsome anchorman who doesn’t know the background to the stories he’s presenting.
I think the movie has trouble making up its mind what we’re meant to think of these characters—that should be a good thing, right? Complicated, fleshed out, flawed people. But they’re not that. You plainly aren’t meant to dislike any of them, even when they’re in conflict with each other. Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks are a little too idealistic: they’ve got to throw out the rose coloured glasses. William Hurt is self-effacing, and though he’s a faker, though he ultimately talks about the news and the news broadcaster as commodities to be sold, he’s genuine in faking it. And you can tell he’s going to succeed, because he’s so damn palatable—he doesn’t have that aroma of elitism that surrounds the other two.
I think the reason I’m in two minds about this film is that I enjoyed it, and was willing to co-operate with its moments of shallowness until the entirely unnecessary, and—I think—badly judged “seven years later” roundup at the end. Somehow sexual politics had fairly successfully been left out of the thing until then—impressive in a film ultimately about sex and about politics. Joan Cusack, ever there to provide a light moment, earlier says to Jane “you’re my idol, in everything but your personal life.” And smack, it gets driven home. It was a pity to suddenly find a bad taste in the mouth over a film I’d had a decent showing of goodwill towards only moments before. I don’t think I can even blame it on Hollywood—maybe I’m giving that town more credit that it deserved with the benefit of another 15 years having passed, but frankly I feel that Hollywood was ready for a better ending. So instead I just ask—why?
posted by Kate Middleton at 1:30 AM
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