Review of Broadcast News (1987) by Paul P — 07 Feb 2011

3: It's the kind of picture that follows in the footsteps of films like Network and All the President's Men, but is also quite unique. One of the things that makes it very distinctive from standard fare are the opening scenes in which we are introduced to the three main characters as children.

We realize that their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, etc are all decided at a very young age, or at least they were in this particular fiction. I went into the film thinking the picture would seem a bit quaint and out of touch with the current state of affairs in journalism and news media, but it ended up seeming very timely and contemporary in many ways.

Rollbacks and mass firings definitely seem like an up-to-the-minute story, but the corruption of journalistic integrity depicted here seems quite slight compared to what we are constantly faced with today.

The rise of the 24 hour news/entertainment cycle and the decline in journalistic standards have been so precipitously rapid that this story just doesn't quite cut it. However, the simple fact that they recognized and commented on it in such an intelligent manner does make it prescient and admirable.

In the end it's a simple matter of choosing between authenticity and artificiality. Of course, artificiality that masquerades as authenticity is what is usually most effective. There are of course exceptions, but we're likely not aware of them even when they are.

And even those exceptions, say the raw power of the footage of the tightrope walker in "Man on Wire", are accentuated and heightened by the score and the editing. Fiction and documentary are inevitably blurred into a continuum; in other words, everything is gray.

The performances are solid and the story is compelling. It isn't brilliant filmmaking, but it is of a higher quality than one expects on a routine basis. Hence, the Criterion release.