Citizenfour

Edward Snowden went from obscurity to fame overnight when he blew the whistle on the NSA's massive espionage program in June 2013. Litigator-turned-reporter Glenn Greenwald got recognized as the person helping Snowden expose the story, along with The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill and The Washington Post's Barton Gellman. But while the world saw the footage of Snowden speaking in the hotel room in Hong Kong, there was another person in the room with him, Greenwald and MacAskill: Laura Poitras, who filmed the interview. "Citizenfour" (the name that Snowden used when he contacted Poitras) tells the story of the interview and international reaction to Snowden's revelations.

It took guts to film and release this documentary. I think that in the end, the main outcome of Snowden's revelations is that the US's and UK's reputations are ruined. The documentary includes footage of hearings on the surveillance in Brazil (whose president was a victim of the surveillance) and Belgium (the seat of the European Union, whose heads of state were victims). I suspect that the peoples of Eastern Europe are the most befuddled by the revelations. For years under the Soviet occupation they looked to the US as a beacon of freedom, and now they see that the US is no different from the USSR. The British government, meanwhile, comes across as a US proxy in Europe.

"Citizenfour" is a documentary that not only deserves a lot of recognition, but should spark more discussion about the surveillance apparatus. As for Edward Snowden, he remains in political asylum in Russia, and his partner Lindsay Mills has joined him there. Oliver Stone is now making a movie about his revelations. In the meantime, I recommend the documentary.

I really appreciate what Snowden did and this film only raises my level of gratitude because it shows the man as well as the information he disclosed. Given this and the risk a filmmaker takes when recording a sensitive subject like this, I do think that the makers of Citizenfour should be praised.

However, once you start watching it you realize that it is made from the same mold that other revelatory, controversial or conspiracist documentaries are made from. The Oscar is not for the quality of the film as it is for the subject. And, assuming that you are informed about the case - I still get the shivers when I see that most people I meet don't even know who Snowden is, you might find it difficult to understand why this movie is better than others, cinematically speaking.

Also, I feel that the film was way too focused on the journalistic process and too little on the actual meaning of the information or the aftermath of the disclosures. It is, actually, a human angle story more than a documentary about the biggest intelligence reveal of the last century. While not a bad thing, it is ironically what Snowden repeatedly said he does not want: to be the center of the story.

One gets to feel the alienation and pervasive angst that Snowden felt, even if this is sometimes done through cheap soundtrack tricks. One sees a smiling 29 year old become burdened more and more as time goes by. Less smiling, more dark patches under the eyes, more bewildered looks. And this while staying in hotels and having communication with people that relay his information and while being protected by a nation state. It is unimaginable what a normal person, without this safety net, would feel.

Bottom line: certainly worth watching, not so sure about the Oscar thing, but as long as that raises awareness of the subject matter, it is also worthy.

I thought Citizenfour was quite powerful as a humanizing portrayal of Snowden. I didn't learn anything new particularly about NSA programs, since I've been reading each story I come across, but the film quite effectively transported me into Snowden's hotel room in Hong Kong and into conversations with Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill. Snowden comes off as a completely responsible, quite sincere, thoughtful young man. He very clearly and explicitly says that he does not want to be the story, and one believes him. Whereas Assange can impress people as narcissistic and Bradley/Chelsea Manning's sexual confusion was only one of a number of facets which distracted from Cablegate, Snowden sounds like a young Ellsberg – very intelligent and well-spoken.

Poitras's style was interesting, I thought. The camera a number of times holds for lengthy periods on fairly static shots of architecture, which served to impress the viewer with the monolithic, pervasive nature of the NSA's networks. There's a long disorienting shot out the window of a train at night or going through a tunnel, which draws you into the dark network Snowden's revealing.

The film successfully touches on a number of different aspects of the surveillance state, bringing in the idea that when we talk about "privacy" we're talking about security, about our constitutional right to freedom from unlawful search and seizure. I think this is a hard sell for too many viewers. I don't fault the film here. I saw it with a friend who was a few minutes late because she was watching the Giants' game. In discussing the movie afterward she questioned just how important some of the issues raised were. Greenwald and others speak passionately about the dangers of the surveillance state, but my date pointed out that she can't feel much fear that the NSA is going to be breaking down her door because of anything she's said on the phone or in e-mail. My own experience is that friends and colleagues on the one hand self-censor and don't mention politics, drugs, Bittorrent use, etc. in e-mail or social media for fear of the all-knowing eye, or on the other hand seem oblivious to any danger – why worry about Google programmatically reading every single e-mail sent or received, if it means free e-mail and potentially more accurate search results when shopping? Snowden at one point convincingly says he doesn't think it is possible for anyone no matter how brilliant and educated to individually fight all the electronic surveillance systems in existence. We're told of the multitude of methods of surveillance and repeatedly shown NSA officials blatantly lying to Congress about their existence. The lack of accountability for this last has been personally troubling to me – I remember Watergate and Iran-Contra – how is it that the heads of the NSA can with impunity flat out lie to Congress about spying on American citizens? What will viewers come away with when walking out of the theater after Citizenfour? I'm wondering how many will see it as a call to action, and how many as a well-executed depiction of Edward Snowden's experience, which may not be seen as intersecting our own.

We all know that, in today's world, telling the truth may set you free, but it can also make you an inmate or a corpse. Activist folk singer Joan Baez, however, reminds us that, "Courage has to do with being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway." It is a fitting description of whistleblower Edward Snowden, whose story is told by the Oscar-nominated American filmmaker Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country) in her intimate and intense documentary Citizenfour. Snowden, a 29-year-old former NSA contractor and intelligence analyst, aware of the serious personal and legal consequences, nevertheless exposed the fact that the government, in the name of fighting terrorism, was spying on all American citizens and those of other countries, in every area of their lives, whether they were suspected of wrongdoing or not.

According to Snowden, he was able to access anyone's records, bypassing codes, passwords and encryptions and said, "We are building the biggest weapon for oppression in the history of mankind." As the film begins, Poitras tells us in voice-over that, when she was working on a film about the dismantling of personal freedoms after the terrorist attack on 9/11, she began to receive encrypted e-mails with the codename of Citizenfour, revealing the desire to come forward with startling information about government surveillance.

One of the e-mails told her that "In the end, if you publish the source material, I will likely be immediately implicated. I ask only that you ensure that this information makes it home to the American public." The film almost exclusively relies on edited conversations, mainly between Snowden and author and journalist Glenn Greenwald interspersed with TV news reports, courtroom trials, and Senate hearings where officials are shown lying at hearings about the government's role in data collection. It does not pretend to be objective and there is no debate about any of the issues brought up in the film or the efficacy of Snowden's actions. It is his story, told from his point of view.

Interviewed by Poitras (who is unseen), Greenwald, at the time working for the Guardian, and reporter Ewen MacAskill in a room at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong where Snowden remained in seclusion for eight days, the heretofore unknown whistleblower reveals his identity for the first time saying that he wants to come out publicly as the source of the information, to show the NSA "I'm not going to let you bully me into silence, like you have everyone else." Snowden says that he made the decision to come forward because he feels there's a great threat to the future of American free speech. "The elected and the electorate," he says, have become "the ruler and the ruled."

Though he says repeatedly that he is not the issue and his personality should not deflect attention from the material disclosed, the human angle nonetheless becomes an important part of the film and we have an opportunity to assess the personality and character of man who has already played an important role in history. Through all of the discussion of his methods and the nature of the material he revealed, Snowden presents his case in an eloquent manner, remaining calm and centered, saying that he anticipated the consequences and is prepared for them.

One of the few times he shows emotion is when talking about the government's interrogation of his girlfriend who, he says, knows nothing about his activities. The tension is palpable, however, and the film takes on aspects of a spy thriller when, after the information has gone public, everyone in the hotel room reacts with paranoia to the fire alarm testing going on in the hotel. Communication, however, eventually reverts to coded e-mails which Poitras shows on the screen when Snowden seeks asylum in Moscow. Though it reveals no new information that hasn't already been reported all over the world during the past eighteen months, Citizenfour is fascinating to observe as history unfolds before our eyes, offering the look and feel of immediacy, not that of a historical retrospective.

While it has taken several years, the warning message in Al Gore's 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth on the potentially disastrous results of climate change seems at long last to be getting through, though even now, it may be too little, too late. When it comes to our right to privacy in today's wired world, however, the prospects are not as bright. Though perhaps preaching to the choir, the film is an important reminder that in the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," or those of abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass who said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." This film begins to crystallize that demand.

You could call it me sleeping under a rock or something, but yeah, I didn't really know anything about this NSA scandal or Edward Snowden. Actually, his name seemed familiar so I'm sure I had heard some passing comments, but I didn't know the real and full story. The documentary's take on him, and on what is happening as it is being shot, gives it a real tension that so many docs just aren't able to have. I haven't seen 2 of the 5 nominees for the Oscar, but from the other two I have, this is better and would make a deserving winner. In many ways it functions as a thriller even if it's very low-key and very quiet in its execution. It's a great film, one that's sure to be ingrained in many people's minds.