Day 341: Wednesday Reviews - Network

Everyone, on three. One, two, three:

I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

The film from which these lines are drawn, Network, is an acerbic and sardonic satire of the world of news anchors, media executives, and television celebrity. Prescient and ever-pertinent, switch out its cast of associate producers, production assistants and head writers for YouTube vloggers and Instagram influencers, and its themes are as apposite today as they were upon the film's release in 1976.

And yet, despite the persistent popularity on social media of its central speech, it is a film somewhat misunderstood, with layers of depth above and beyond that one iconic call to anger, which call is, in fact, only a small facet of the greater and more terrible truth posited come the end credits.

***

While Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) directs with requisite restraint and control, much of Network's success must be apportioned to Paddy Chayefsky's elegant, exemplary script, which, in a few deft manoeuvres, takes what could have been straightforward (if biting) commentary and raises it to the level of myth, finding the archetypal in its characters, turning its realm of approval ratings and cults of celebrity into a legend with all the hallmarks of Greek tragedy.

It's there from the opening lines, a burst of expositional narration so sublime as to have become paradigmatic:

“In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, he fell to a 22 share, and by 1972, he was down to a 15 share. In 1973, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and, on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks…”

In one succinct stanza we are given the premise of our story, introduced to its pivotal character, and taught about the values of this world, where death and depression, and everything else, have meaning only insofar as they affect the two vital pillars of worship: the HUT rating, and the audience share figures. Beautiful!

***

And so, then, we begin to follow Howard Beale, the booze-hound newscaster, played by booze-hound actor Peter Finch. Beale, in the grip of a breakdown and facing imminent job loss, informs the public during his nightly broadcast that in one week's time, on-air, he will blow his brains out.

The response at his station is one of disbelief and fury, but is mitigated by Max Schumacher, president of the news division and one of Beale's oldest friends. Max convinces the station to give Beale the opportunity to go back on air the following night to apologise for his outburst and to bow out gracefully, saving face for all involved.

Beale, however, after a drink and despair-fuelled spiritual awakening/complete breakdown, instead uses his timeslot to again go off-piste, railing vociferously and decisively against the world's "bullshit" and proclaiming the emptiness of modern life.

Surprisingly - or perhaps not - the show's ratings go through the roof, and studio executives at the ailing network find themselves with an unexpected hit on their hands.

What follows is a caustic, haunting, and hellishly funny journey through a realm of egos positioning for power, old white men hawkishly watching the bottom line, and slack-jawed hordes primed for a prophet to lead them from their supine positions on couches across the nation and towards freedom, wherever that may lie.

***

Max, played by William Holden, worries for his friend, but everyone else seeks to exploit him. Faye Dunaway plays the ambitious and cynical Diane, head of the network's programming department, who sees an opportunity to market Beale as a messianic figure, and to "develop" his news show with the addition of fortune tellers, vox populi boxes, bank heists of the week, and other elements that in truth appear rather staid in comparison to the regular content paraded today on Fox News and its ilk, but which I'm sure seemed ludicrous back in 1976.

There is also Robert Duvall's Executive Senior Vice President of the network, writhing above the viper's nest of producers and presidents and public relations managers, a newer breed of executive contriving to sweep away the remnants of the older establishment and usher in his own agenda.

And, at the centre of it all, Beale, increasingly separated from reality, frequently overcome with fits of religious fervour - or DTs seizures, perhaps - believing himself to have heard the voice of God, passing on the message to the people, cutting through all the artifice and emptiness and greed with words beginning as authentic roar and eventually becoming catchphrase:

"I'm as mad as hell and-" well, you know the rest.

***

It is a perspicacious script, rich in theme, profound in meaning. Chayefsky - an esteemed writer known for leading the "kitchen sink realism" movement in American television in the 50s, gets to the heart of his characters, writes stunning dialogue, but most of all has a sharp instinct for story.

Network is folklore, legend. It correctly posits that television and fame belong to a realm created from dreams and desires, a land that trades in the symbolic and is presided over by the living embodiment of gods.

I love this. The subconscious is, after all, real. Its depths, though mostly hidden from us, are there. Network's premise is that we bestow celebrities, ratings, shows with mythical importance because these things are the visible representations of aspects important to the subconscious world, the tails cresting the surface, as we paddle about up here, of dark things that churn the waters far below.

Beale, in the throes of suicidal despair, ceases to care about the trivial distractions of the surface world. In a moment of freedom he looks down, and with clarity spies glittering pearls coruscating in the usually turbid depths. He reaches down and yanks them up. These pearls he shares with people back on the surface - in the form of his visionary speeches - and the people worship and celebrate him for it.

Yet myths do not allow boons to be taken lightly; the subconscious world is predicated upon ancient and immutable laws. Beale, in transgressing against societal norms, speaking what no one else dares, has meddled with forces he does not comprehend.

We, along with Beale, may think of television stars as gods. But one of Network's ultimate thrusts is that stars are but a cast of heroes and villains, plucky adventurers bestowed with power and riches by the true gods so long as they play the game.

And who are these true gods? In Network they are personified in Arthur Jensen, chairman of the communications conglomerate that owns Beale's network. Jensen, unforgettably played by Ned Beatty, is an omnipotent corporate deity who speaks for the forces of profit and stock, for the "vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variete, multi-national dominion of dollars." And with our uppity promethean Howard Beale he is, to put it lightly, displeased.

By trading in the archetypal in this way, Chayefsky and Lumet are able to take their satire to the level of monomyth. Beale is a tragic hero who, through the warped courage that comes when deciding to kill yourself, is able to descend rapidly to the mystical centre of the hero's journey, to the meeting with the goddess and the winning of the ultimate boon. But such boons are never unguarded, and Beale's spirit, lacking the sane part of him that in successful heroes' journeys must consciously agree to cross the threshold of adventure, and lacking preparation from the road of trials, is frail and unprepared to battle the dragons that his boon-theft awakens. Such a story can only end one way.

So much of Hollywood, and television, and comics, really corrupts the hero's journey, putting all the emphasis on the prizes, and none on the responsibility, the price that in reality is paid by staring down the universe. That Network is able to understand this, in a story actually about Hollywood and television, is, I think, crazy cool.

***

There are things I don't like. Some of the filmmaking is clunky by today's standards - the odd wobbly camera, blood that is obviously red paint. And its attitudes to gender roles is... very 70s, most troublingly in its depiction of the relationship between the avuncular Max and the tenacious Diane. Max is drawn to the alluring (and perpetually bra-less) Diane, and finds himself pulled into an affair with her, despite himself.

Diane is, as Max himself points out, "television incarnate... indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy". She is a monster, though humanised by the script and Dunaway's perfect performance. The story demands her. And yet something sticks in my craw. Perhaps it's the subtle implication that any woman who is driven and self-reliant must also be ruthless, carved out on the inside, desperate for yet utterly incapable of receiving the love from a man that would save her.

Her knowing cynicism is an astute comment on the behaviour of so many of us sneering our way towards destruction in these waning years of modern Western civilisation. But I don't like how the film portrays Max as the conscience of the piece, despite him cheating on his wife, choosing desire over commitment, and then going back to patch things up when he's bored - while Diane is scolded for her inability to love.

***

Yet in all other regards Network is a masterpiece. Sharp, sagacious, funny, with career-high performances, eminently quotable passages, and a script that finds the mythical in the mundane, and the spiritual in the secular, it is truly a tale for the ages. Sit your kids down and tell them the story of Howard Beale, who in his time had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news...

It's one everyone should hear.