Reflection #006
Broadcast News (1987)
This is an interesting movie. Not interesting enough for me to pay a whole lot of attention to it, but I like that the characters exist against the backdrop of the world around them. You’re thinking, “Yes, that’s how movies work,” but what I mean is that what this movie is about is not really what the movie is about. On the surface, it is about a love triangle and the interpersonal lives of these news people: how they struggle to connect, how they pursue their ambitions, how they confuse professional competence with emotional fulfillment.
But the movie isn’t really about that. It doesn’t tell you this directly, but it is about the commodification and hollowing out of broadcast news. News for profit. News as a business. News as a product being sold to you. It’s hinted at several times, as when a military base in Libya is bombed and the news anchor isn’t upset about the loss of life or the possibility of a wider conflict. He’s upset that he wasn’t chosen to do the special report, and this is what makes the event a tragedy for him. The movie does not foreground these things because it doesn’t really comment on them, but they are unmistakable.
I remember the post that put the film on my radar mentioned the interview with the rape survivor and how she was used, her story manipulated by the anchor and the news program. This is pretty unmissable, but again, the movie doesn’t tell you to pay attention to it. They discuss the segment afterward, but what matters to them is not the woman or her story. What matters is how brilliant the anchor was to cry on camera.
Overall, there was a quality to the film that I didn’t care for. It was distinctly 80s, which it would have to be if it’s about the commodification of broadcast news, but I don’t really care for the 80s in most ways. The dialogue grated on me, possibly because of its class character, maybe because of its 80s style, though I noticed a few lines I liked. Jack Nicholson was enjoyable, but I have a hard time taking Albert Brooks seriously. He looks too much like Garry Shandling, and I kept wondering if Holly Hunter was ever going to ask him if that buzzing sound was coming from his penis.