Citizenfour (***)

Decades from now, will Edward Snowden be widely viewed as a patriot who fought to protect the privacy of Americans from an increasingly intrusive government? Or as a traitor who, by copying government files and revealing the data-collection methods of the National Security Agency, betrayed his government and compromised the ability of the United States to catch potential terrorists? Or, I suspect, both? This documentary by Laura Poitras does not attempt to give a definitive answer to that question, but allows Snowden to explain his motivations and his course of action.

Not that Poitras is trying to be an objective filmmaker. She was in fact, Snowden’s initial conduit for releasing the NSA files. (Citizenfour was how he identified himself initially.) He had already contacted journalist Glenn Greenwald, whom he corrected assumed would be sympathetic to his views on privacy, but was unable to establish a secure communication method. So instead he turned to Poitras, who had already poked at US “war on terror” policies in her documentaries My Country, My Country and The Oath. Poitras arranged for Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, both of the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, to interview Snowden in Hong Kong, and she and Greenwald were the conduit for the information the public got to hear. The filmed briefing sessions, over an eight-day period, form the heart of this film.

If nothing else, one is likely to conclude from the film that Snowden was at the very least, acting out of a sincere concern that the government was overreaching in its data-gathering, that he does not seem to be a crazy person, or even unusual in his demeanor, and that he acted cautiously. The caution was both in terms of how he released the data (only Poitras and Greenwald received all of the copied files) and how he arranged the release, including encrypting his conversations and not telling anyone he knew, including his girlfriend, of his plans.

But judging Snowden’s actions means assessing more than his good intentions and carefulness. It means also quantifying the seriousness of the threats to privacy, the value of the information that can be gained from searching millions of phone and internet records, and the effects of revealing the NSA’s activities. Poitras tells us some things about the first, virtually nothing about the second, and very little about the third. In her defense, these are all difficult to quantify, and doing so was probably not her intent. Rather, the film is best seen as explaining the types of activities the NSA (and, incidentally, and even more broadly, the British government) was engaged in, why Snowden saw that as a problem, and what he, assisted by Greenwald and other journalists, did about it. If you are only mildly interested in those questions, I’d avoid the movie. Snowden himself is articulate, and worth hearing, but not so colorful as to be a riveting personality. Visually, the film is unavoidably on the dull side, with the t-shirt wearing Snowden and his hotel room filling much screen time. And, because Poitras does not directly depict any of the government efforts to find Snowden, or prosecute him, or deal with the fallout of his revelations, the sense of tension is less than it might have been. Snowden’s relevations are a valuable piece of history, and it is good to have this record of what happened. But, as a movie, Citizenfour is merely worthwhile, not riveting.

IMDb link

viewed 11/19/14 7:20 pm at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/21/14

The Fifth Element (***)

You could be forgiven, after watching the opening sequence of this film, that you’re watching the beginning of some James Bond knockoff. But is Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch), founder of WikiLeaks, James Bond or the villain of the story? Or both?

Assange burst into prominence with news that WikiLeaks had obtained the classified information, including hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables, provided by Army intelligence analyst Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning in 2010. This story begins there, but flashes back two years to Assange’s meeting at a Berlin conference with Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl, of Rush), a German hacker who, in this version, anyway, becomes lured by Assange’s talk of righting wrongs as well as his own story, difficult childhood and all, some of which is true. Pretty soon, the two of them, with just a little help, are spreading news of assassination plots and banking law violations.

Since Berg’s book is one of the sources for the movie, it’s natural that the movie makes Berg the hero of the story, perhaps Assange’s right-hand man, perhaps the victim of his manipulations, like a battered wife. He’s the ordinary guy/audience stand-in contrasted with the charismatic Assange, whose self-satisfaction possibly covers deep self-doubt. Cumberbatch, who also plays the title role in the BBC’s modernized Sherlock series, knows something about playing smug, and he’s memorable in the role.

Director Bill Condon’s (The Twilight Saga) attempt to give this the look and feel of a techno thriller doesn’t disguise that fact that it isn’t, save perhaps in the last half hour, and most of the shots of computer screens don’t illuminate anything important about how WikiLeaks worked. I wondered how David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, the team behind The Social Network, might have approached this story.

A question the film presents, but does not address, is whether we should treat people like Assange as journalists; and, secondarily, does Wikileaks and its online cousins represent a new paradigm for information transfer that governments and organizations will need to adjust to regardless of what the law can do? These questions go beyond the story of Assange, whose ultimate fate remains unclear. The movie does a competent job of presenting that story, despite its annoyingly slick beginning. But it won’t stick with you.

IMDb link

 

viewed 10/9/13 7:30 at Ritz East [PFS screening]

Fair Game (***1/4)

The story of Valerie Plame, or Valerie Plame Wilson, is pretty well known to those who follow American politics, especially in the spring of 2003. Plame’s (Naomi Watts) husband had been sent to Niger to see whether Iraq had attempted to buy “yellow cake” uranium there. If so, this would tend to corroborate the views of those in the Bush administration who believed that Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear weapons, and that war was justified to prevent this. But Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) found no evidence in Niger, and said so in a New York Times editorial. Soon after, a column by Robert Novak mentioned that Wilson’s wife was a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.” And then she wasn’t.

Directed by Doug Liman (Swingers, Mr. & Mrs. Smith), Fair Game was adapted by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth from books by Plame and Wilson, and sticks to their point of view. Therefore, it is not primarily a political movie. Factually speaking, you are left essentially none the wiser (at least, if you read the news) about the process by which Plame’s name was leaked to Robert Novak. Most of the key plot points are revealed in scenes where one or the other of the Wilsons is shown watching a news report, or reading a newspaper story.

The story Liman and the Butterworths tell is the story of a married couple whose lives are upended with no warning. The early scenes show Plame as a cool-headed operator (and operative) who merely listens as her dinner-table companions express opinions on the possibility of war. (Her husband, a former ambassador and a foreign-policy expert, is less restrained.) At work, Plame calmly persuades. When a colleague loudly insists, over objections from others, that the Iraqis have centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, Plame defuses the situation. “We’re not saying you’re wrong,” she says, “but if you’re right, it’s huge, and we want to be sure.” Later, it is this hawkish colleague who has the ear of the White House.

This pre-leak part of the movie is less exciting, but there is a key moment when Plame explains that to lie convincingly, you need to know why you’re lying, and never forget the truth. She’s talking to a source she plans to send to Iraq to gather information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons program, and her lies are necessary for her job. In any event, the latter half of the movie has obvious dramatic appeal even for the non-political junkie. Although Plame had not been a political actor, she and Wilson were subjected to threats, intrusions by the press, and false information.

The media, some of whom couldn’t even get straight whether Plame was a field agent or merely an office worker, come off looking at least as bad as the Bush administration. Were they lying? It’s not clear, because for something to be a lie you need to actually know the truth.

IMDB link

viewed 11/2/2010 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 11/2/2010

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (***1/4)

It was a war begun under a false pretense that lasted way longer, was more deadly, and proved much more costly than predicted. The outcome was not as planned, and that severely impacted the political fortunes of the president who had poured hundreds of thousands of troops into a faraway country. That was Vietnam. People under 45 or 50 won’t remember Daniel Ellsberg, and yet his actions indirectly may have led to the downfall of a president and to one of the most important First Amendment verdicts by the United States Supreme Court.

Ellsberg’s goal was to end the Vietnam War, though. Through his job as a United States foreign policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, he had access to a top-secret report about the history of US involvement in Vietnam. Notably, it was top secret not because it would aid the enemy, but because it would demonstrate the deception of American presidents and the unreality of upbeat assessments about the likelihood of success. After handing the report to The New York Times and other newspapers, Ellsberg earned both a federal indictment and, from President Richard Nixon, the epithet that gives this film its title.

This can be seen as a companion piece to The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary that featured Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara and Ellsberg were both originally supporters of the war (though Ellsberg with more reservations), and both realized that the US was not, as President Lyndon Johnson had told the public, winning the war. But whereas McNamara felt, until decades later, that his duty was to be loyal to his boss, the president, Ellberg came sooner to feel otherwise. Directors Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith allow Ellsberg to narrate his own story, incorporating recent interviews of him and others. Stylistically, the movie is not noteworthy. There is no Philip Glass score a la Morris’s work to lend a sense of urgency, and no fancy graphics. Minor re-enactments of certain scenes are included, and period footage, but mostly the movie is a typical “talking heads” documentary. Almost all of the voices, though, are of those directly involved in leaking the document, in Ellsberg’s life, or in related matters. One academic, people’s historian Howard Zinn, appears, but as one who knew Ellsberg in the 1970s. Nixon is heard on tape, wondering in one excerpt whether dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam might not be a good idea.

While little new information is revealed, this is a very well organized look at a piece of history that any American ought to know.

IMDB link

viewed 4/14/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/15/10