Citizenfour review – Edward Snowden documentary is utterly engrossing

[bemildred]

Laura Poitras’s brave documentary follows Edward Snowden as his leaks about the activities of the NSA shock the world
4 out of 5 stars

Last year, UK cinemagoers were treated to two competing accounts of the story of Julian Assange: Bill Condon’s oddly inert drama The Fifth Estate, and Alex Gibney’s more pointedly dramatic documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. Although very different in form, content and, indeed, success (Gibney’s film was Bafta-nominated, Condon’s was hailed as one of the year’s biggest flops), both movies wrestled with the conundrum of separating the cult of Assange’s divisive personality from the significance of the information that he helped to publish – for better or worse.

There’s a similar tension at the heart of Citizenfour, which intimately documents whistleblower Edward Snowden’s efforts to lift the lid on the intrusive post-9/11 US eavesdropping industry. Yet unlike Assange (who appears briefly), Snowden shows no signs of wanting to be the centre of any story; on the contrary, he seems positively camera-shy as Oscar-nominee Laura Poitras captures him in a Hong Kong hotel room in 2013, over eight tense days during which his revelations are first made public. Accompanied by the contrastingly gregarious Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian’s meticulous Ewen MacAskill, Snowden attempts to weigh up the importance of standing up to be counted against the possibility of the story becoming about him, rather than his information. With winning candour, he admits that he has no experience of the media and is eager to hand over decisions about what should be revealed, and when, to people whom he trusts to know better – another stark contrast with Assange’s more egomaniacal approach.

Key to Snowden’s trust is Poitras, who earned herself a place on the Department of Homeland Security’s “watch list” with 2006’s My Country, My Country (about life under US occupation in Iraq) and 2010’s The Oath (filmed in Yemen and Guantánamo) and here builds upon her 2012 short The Program, wherein NSA whistleblower William Binney revealed how technology designed to gather foreign intelligence was used “to spy on US citizens without warrants”.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/19/citizen-four-review-edward-snowden-nsa-engrossing

[Luminous Animal]

1. Very excited to see the movie Thursday night in San Francisco.