Those bastards in New York and LA always get first dibs on movies, so I had to
wait over a month before Laura Poitras' Edward Snowden documentary, Citizenfour
finally made its way to San Jose. In the space of time it took to
unceremoniously make its debut here--in a tiny little, run-down theater no
less-- I would estimate that I devoured at least 50,000 words from various
sources regarding Mr. Snowden and his recent history with the NSA.
Turns out all that research that wasn't necessarily a good thing, at least not
in terms of enjoying the film. It was a bit like that old cliché that the movie
is never as good as the book. While Poitras did an excellent job directing,
editing and generally creating an atmosphere of suspense, I knew too much going
in. There were no surprises. I had over prepared and there was little in the
story that I didn't already know as it unfolded on the screen before my eyes.
That said, I will try to extract myself from the process in order to give an
honest review.
One of the things that the film does exceptionally well is convey the sense of
urgency and paranoia that Snowden and his journalist allies are experiencing in
real time as the story unfolds. We are never far away from the feeling that,
regardless of how each of us in the audience might feel about Snowden, we are
watching history as it is being made. Remarkably, it is a momentous piece of
history that takes place largely in a nondescript, upscale Hong Kong hotel
room. As Snowden sits on the bed and calmly unravels his tale of a U.S.
government that thinks that it is above the law, suspicious interruptions keep
creeping in. Phantom phone calls ring through to his room. Unannounced tests of
the fire alarm system buzz every few seconds. If these were just coincidences
and not some spy's attempts to subvert Snowden's plans, they couldn't have been
scripted better by Hollywood in terms of adding a sense of claustrophobic dread
to the already tense mood.
Poitras intersperses location jumps from Brazil to Berlin, Utah to the U.K. in
a story of intrigue and worldwide government collusion that plays on the screen
like a real-life John le Carré novel. We see a massive new security
supercenter designed to hold all the terabits of data which the NSA is
collecting about us being built in Bluffdale, Utah. We see a fair amount of
Berlin and Rio de Janeiro, due to the fact that filmmaker Poitras and Snowden's
handpicked reporter, Glenn Greenwald have both been forced to live outside of
their American homeland as a result of practicing too conspicuously their First
Amendment right to political dissent. A good deal of the story also takes place
in England due to the fact that the leaks contain a good deal of damning
information regarding Britain's GCHQ (roughly the equivalent of the U.S. NSA),
and as a result, reporters from London's The Guardian
newspaper are brought into Snowden's inner circle.
An intriguing subplot introduces us to NSA whistleblower William Binney, whose
story of a life turned upside down and ruined by the NSA after he exposed their
illegal activities serves as a cautionary tale and goes a long way towards
illustrating why Snowden felt that he had no choice but to flee his country.
Worse yet for Snowden, as his attorney so deftly explains in the film, because
the charges the DOJ levied against Snowden under the 1917 Espionage Act don't
afford any defense team to mount a 'whistleblower' or public interest defense,
Snowden has no legal standing, even if his aims were altruistic. In the eyes of
his government, Snowden is an admitted thief and a fugitive traitor; the fair
trial they dangle from afar is a sham from the start.
I found it disappointing, however, that in another segment, Snowden mentions
the fact that some of the documents he copied from the NSA database were of an
"operational" nature and that the reporters with whom he entrusted
them needed to be careful about what they print. That is to say that some of
what he took might compromise the safety of boots on the ground. On one hand,
this indicates that Snowden is concerned for the safety of those in the field,
but on the other it leaves us with the distinct impression that he may have
acted irresponsibly in the first place by not being more careful with that
information. Poitras would have done well to address the obvious debate concerning
human rights versus genuine American security which has been going on in this
country for over a year. In not allowing for a counterweight to Snowden or at
least giving Snowden a chance to explain himself in that regard, the film sells
its thesis short. A hero can have flaws, but not unless his audience is
convinced that he has not done more harm than good.
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