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A+ |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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Network
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Apr 12, 2008
9
of
10 people found this review helpful
Network, 1976, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Dir. Sidney Lumet - Starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Arthur Burghardt, John Carpenter, Kathy Cronkite, Marlene Warfield
Today, television is a tough, hard-bitten business - everybody's jobs, whether they be janitor, executive, or actor - are run by the ratings. Your entire career counts on a single sheet of paper that tells how many people watched your shows the night before. Sidney Lumet's 'Network' is undoubtedly the most truthful and bitterly prophetic tale of a challenging network that runs an insane man's life on the line just for some miserly rating, in fierce competition with the three larger networks. It's uncanny to look at today's prime time lineups and cable news channels, and see how truthfully it was depicted more than twenty years ago. Who knew writer Paddy Chayefsky could predict the mishaps of daily talk soups and biased connections with radical groups? It's amazing to think about.
In 1976, the smallest of the four large major broadcasting channels, Union Broadcasting System, has fallen down in the charts so quickly, that they've decided to do some spring cleaning and take out a few of its weak spots. But the company did the wrong thing when they fired veteran news anchorman Howard Beale (Finch) after 30 years on the air. Since Howard doesn't take this well, he decides to announce live on air that he is going to kill himself on the next Tuesday, because he's 'sick of all the bulls**t'. The ratings go up sky high, and the network decides to keep Beale on and allow him to rant as much as he wants. Howard's good friend Max (Holden) doesn't think the idea is any good because of Beale's instability, and so chief exec Frank Hackett (Duvall) fires him. A heartless rating chief who Max has fallen in love with, Diana (Dunaway), cares nothing about Beale's sanity and decides to keep the show running, and give him a prime-time spot. But when Beale starts spreading the truths about how the network is using him, the ratings are dropping by the minute, and something needs to be done to stop Howard Beale...such as murder.
This cast is amazing and heartstopping in every way. Faye Dunaway, who won an Oscar for Best Actress for it in 1976, is pure perfection as Diana Christensen, who has not one shred of decency or dignity within her - taking care of the ratings as if it was a life-or-death situation. She is cruel, heartless, and unforgiving, realizing only till the end that she has lost her connection to reality and humanity because of her constant hopeless dedication to the network. When the scenes begin to reel of her network dealing with a terrorist radical group that robs and brainwashes Americans into joining their liberation army, the audience realizes the low depths that her heart would sink just to get a couple more bucks in her pocket. William Holden is also excellent, as the one sane worker of UBS, who can not understand how the channel would go through all the trouble just to help increase the network's share. He develops a close relationship with Diana, but then significantly stops it when he realizes that there's 'nothing left in you that I can live with'. His realization of what he has done to his family and how he has dropped all of that for a woman with no soul is very realistic. Frank Hackett, played by Duvall, is even more evil and maniacal than Diana and Beale combined - he is greedy, pushy, and hateful - and is fueled by the power of money. But the cake goes to Peter Finch, who perfects the role of the insane Howard Beale, who has become an iconic symbol for the ranting and raving airwave slots, and has personified his unforgettable phrase 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm going to take this anymore!' He is frantic, short-temper, and a grumbling lunatic - one that can only be remembered by his rain-soaked trenchcoat as he stands behind his wooden newsroom platform, screaming out his prophecies of the world. It is purely horrific brilliance.
Network has an very haunting personality. At times, it's very darkly humorous, as we watch Beale jabber on and on about the wrongs of the world, and the insanity that Americans experience after watching TV. But sometimes it's plain scary, as Jensen, the corporate CEO, screams some sense into Beale and convinces him that he is God - an untruth, but scary as we watch the instable Beale accept it as true. Hackett talks at the very end of the film about 'whether to kill Howard Beale or not', wanting to 'hear everybody's opinions on the idea'. The fact that networks could drop this low, and be portrayed in the deadly serious fashion, is simply amazing. Lumet also uses the techniques involving light to help a scene's traction. The darkness of some scenes as well as the little worklight lamp from the desks give the impression of the emptiness of the offices. We watch as something so outrageously unpredictable becomes the biggest hit, beating All in the Family and the local news - it shows how obsessed television viewers are when they see something so wildly attractive such as Howard Beale telling them to stick their heads out of the windows and shout.
This film is one of the best ever created, undoubtedly. It's a chilling truth-bomb that has slowly become more of a prophecy than a movie as years have gone by. The art of television networking has been entirely exposed as well as the institutions that run along on our tubes at home. To watch as some talking head tells the entire world his point of views and then to be followed someone else's who is the polar opposite is just a prime example of how low we can go to sway people's beliefs. Perhaps Holden's character said it the best about television: 'Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.' Somebody ought to tell the reality show makers for the networks this sometimes soon.
4/4 stars - Highly Recommended |
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