Broadcast News is a mature movie—and by that I don’t mean dully polished, but open to and interested in all the complication and resignation that comes with being an actual adult.
Written and directed by James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, As Good as It Gets), Broadcast News manages to be a clever commentary on mass media; a whip-smart workplace comedy; and a richly textured romantic triangle. The film earned seven Oscar nominations, but went home from the Academy Awards without a win.
The honors included acting nods for its three co-leads. Holly Hunter anchors the film as Jane Craig, an obsessively driven, ethically scrupulous, instinctively brilliant television news producer who begins each day with a sobbing session that is either a therapeutic practice or a daily breakdown. Jane’s colleague, closest friend, and aspiring romantic partner is Albert Brooks’ Aaron Altman, an equally talented reporter with anchoring aspirations. Those are thwarted, however, by WASPier newcomer Tom Grunick (William Hurt), who is promoted beyond his experience, something even he admits. (Among James L. Brooks’ many golden bits of dialogue is this early line from Tom: “I’m no good at what I’m being a success at.”)
As these professional and interpersonal tensions simmer, the three performances work in perfect harmony. Hunter’s spitfire talent is on full display; she’s one of those actresses who could have fit seamlessly into a classic Hollywood comedy like His Girl Friday, even as she makes Jane a thoroughly modern woman. (I love her retort when a boss sarcastically observes that it must be tough for her to always be the smartest person in the room: “No, it’s awful.”) Brooks is hilarious, yet more than comic relief; when Aaron’s professionalism comes up against his jealousy of Tom, it’s the professionalism that often wins out. And Hurt threads possibly the tightest needle: acknowledging Tom’s naivete, layering that acknowledgment into the actual performance, yet also making it clear that Tom does have a gift for “selling” the news, as he puts it.
Far more than a three-person character study, however, Broadcast News also offers two dynamite filmmaking sequences: the race to get a segment on the air, which Jane is editing up to the last second; and Jane’s coaching of Tom, through an earpiece, during his first emergency appearance on air. (Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus mostly lends the film a handsome glow, but for the latter scene he breaks out two split-diopter shots that intimately connect Jane and Tom across the studio space. No wonder their celebratory moment together a short time later has a postcoital glow.)
And so Broadcast News would be nearly perfect, except for its final few minutes. After a climax that leaves all three characters dissatisfied in some way, yet—yes—more mature, the narrative jumps ahead in time by a few years. Jane, Aaron, and Tom are all awkwardly reunited, for little reason other than to stiltedly declare biographical facts meant to reassure the audience that things turned out OK for each of them. It’s hackily conceived and half-heartedly acted, but what’s worse is the way this ending betrays the professional dilemma the film had been exploring: how to deliver the news an audience “needs” instead of the frivolity that it “wants.” With this ending, Broadcast News does the latter; it’s like watching a hard-hitting news show suddenly turn into The Price is Right.
(4/27/2022)
