Network (1976)
From Summa Bergania
This is the only movie I can think of that is as serious as it is funny. Lumet and Chayefsky, both with years of background in television studios, detect the gradual drift TV networks started making toward rating-driven content, leaving behind a sense of objectivity and responsibility in favor of scandal and sensationalism. The satire leaves us with such artistically exaggerated scenes that you can't help laughing as the network books a terrorist reality TV show (the comedic climax being their contract negotiation), and yet you know the sad truth that such a show would be a popular hit.
It's absolutely uncanny how prophetic the movie was. Howard Beale showed us how news went from dispassionate detached objectivism to personal scatter-brained rants... and that is exactly how news is presented to us now. Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Oprah Winfrey... News now always has a name or brand attached to it. It's no longer unprejudiced, but actually marketed by the hosts' prejudices. The public doesn't want dry dull facts, they want Anderson Cooper's personal interpretation of the facts. Howard Beale (in the movie) was seen as more honest when he spoke his mind, which is the same as today's vain journalists. But the truth is that the news is not more honest, but more distorted, being tainted by Beale's personal feelings. The ratings are higher, and the host has opportunities to make extra money by writing books or endorsing products, but the cost is that we've traded news for propaganda. (And the latest journalistic innovation, blogs, takes this even a step further.)
Not only was the movie prescient in noticing the main drift, but it even got the details right. Beale is accompanied by a psychic... ever noticed Bill O'Reilly's "body language expert" sidekick? The movie even says in one line that the psychic now has her own show... ala Dr. Phil from Oprah. On the other side of Beale is a computer that reads the latest opinion polls... which now scrolls constantly at the bottom of our screen during every primary.
And the sheer brilliance of this film is how it finds a way to end with the inexorable, ironic, sardonic conclusion of its thesis. It's one of only a very few movies that after I saw it I immediately wanted to see it again.
So why all this praise and only 4 stars? Honestly... because I think the script relies too heavily on the unnecessary phrase "God damn it." I don't consider myself a Puritan by any means, each time I hear that phrase it feels like getting an electric shock.
- David: 4 Stars
