CITIZENFOUR

I am naturally sympathetic to the story told in this documentary. I consider Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald not to mention Laura Poitras the director of this film to be heroes. I consider an over intrusive government to be a real threat to freedom and perhaps the beginning of future losses of freedom – the last stage of America’s long slow slide into complete dictatorship. However, this is not a fawning Snowden fanboy (or girl) film. Rather it’s the thrilling real time story of how Snowden first made contact with Poitras and Greenwald, initial interviews in a Hong Kong hotel room where Snowden reveals the extent and the mechanics of US worldwide surveillance, and then Snowden going public. This is intercut with other stories such as Poitras’s being harassed by the US government, as well as the stories of NSA whistleblower William Binney and the company Lavabit as well as a primer on US law enforcement info gathering using Occupy Wall Street as an example.

I really liked the way the story was told – Poitras, other than as a participant and with the occasional caption to explain what was happening, kept out of it always the sign of a good documentary filmmaker not getting in the way of the story. I also liked how they broke down complex technical issues into easy to understand “how to’s” for a layperson audience (me included). My only complaint is the soundtrack which is taken from Nine Nails Ghosts I-IV. I dig Trent Reznor but the music is a distraction. Not every film needs a soundtrack.

In regards to substance, there's no shortage of jolting information here (the notion of linkability is scary which is why I never link my various Internet ID's together) but I’m especially struck by the story of Poitras a filmmaker who ran afoul of the National Security Agency after she made a film on the Iraq War in the mid 2000’s. Not only did they detain her and confiscate her film every time she tried to enter the US (She’s a US citizen who lives abroad), one of the first documents Snowden shows her is reports on her movements –She was being followed and her phone bugged due to her films (long before she ever met Snowden). That is what dictatorships do and is a representative of the many other similar scenes in the film. I'm also especially struck by the notion that we now use the word "privacy" to describe what used to be called "liberty and freedom" - A notion advanced in the film. This is an urgent entertaining doc that is also easy to follow.