Citizenfour

Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras, won the Oscar last year for Best Documentary. Poitras points out at the beginning of the film that because of films she's made that she's on the travel watch list of the U.S. government. I suppose it shows what a weird country we live in that someone can be a terror suspect and win the highest of film honors.

But Citizenfour shows the insanity of the U.S. government when it comes to the reaction of terrorism. Poitras, along with journalist Glenn Greenwald, is approached by an anonymous source by encrypted emails (I wouldn't know what do with an encrypted email) suggesting he has proof that the NSA is doing massive spying on Americans through use of telephone records. Eventually Poitras and Greenwald travel to Hong Kong, where they meet Edward Snowden.

Citizenfour is unlike most documentaries, in that it is capturing things as they happen, and has no retrospect. This is a behind-the-scenes look at how Snowden became infamous by blowing the whistle on the country's intelligence agencies, who had baldly lied about gathering records. Greenwald published the scoop, which caused all sorts of scrambling in the capital. That is was on the watch of President Obama, who had promised not to do this sort of thing, made things seem worse.

The movie is mostly a few people sitting in a Hong Kong hotel room talking. so it's certainly not for everyone. And it of course has a liberal bent--that personal liberties are too valuable to give up en masse, even in the interest of national security. As Greenwald points out, this was different than the Patriot Acts intention of spying on terror suspects. This was spying on everyone.

Snowden, realizing the jeopardy he's in, lets Greenwald identify him, and his name became known everywhere. He comes across as a thoughtful man who has very high principles, and whether you agree with what he did or not you have to admire his courage. He understands he will probably have to sever family ties, and certainly will never come back to the United States.

Some of the talk is intellectually rigorous, so it's not a movie to watch while surfing the Net. Poitras casts the film in ominous overtones, such as when she films the construction of a building in Utah designed to gather intelligence. The music makes it seem like we're watching a killer robot being built. But paranoia is the spine of this film--is it paranoia when the government is secretly subpoenaing records from major telecommunication companies?

There is a bit of paranoid humor, when their is a buzzing sound in Snowden's hotel room. Turns out it is the fire alarm system being tested. Or is it?