Review of Citizenfour (2014) by Ken L — 11 Jun 2015

Laura Poitras was an Oscar nominee for the 2006 documentary feature My Country, My Country which followed an Iraqi doctor running for election in the newly liberated nation. For her efforts, she was harassed and detained dozens of time by NSA officers when trying to re-enter the United States. Based on her Post-9/11 work and experiences, Edward Snowden chose her to document his meetings with Glenn Greenwald in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013 as they broke the biggest news story of the year. As a top level systems administrator for NSA, Snowden details and provides evidence on how the U.S. government records every email, phone call, Google search, Facebook post and text message sent and received by every American citizen in order to create metadata on its citizens in the name of national security. Most of this happens without any permission from U.S. courts, spreads to foreign countries making contact with U.S. citizens, and involves direct lies to Congress on the part of NSA leadership.

Most moviegoers make the mistake of not taking documentaries seriously as entertainment. Few features will entertain you more than this one. It is riveting to watch Snowden, a diamond intellect who knows exactly what he's risking and makes his motivations clearly and precisely known. Chilling moments include Snowden unplugging the phone in his room noting how even when they are not using the phone, there is technology with the capability to record everything being said in the room; a strange fire alarm going off in the hotel as if to draw them out of the room; Snowden and Greenwald staring out the window at various times fearing a drone strike; Snowden typing on a keyboard under a blanket so no device can record and interpret his keystrokes. A musical score hums ominously throughout. It's infinitely fascinating, infuriating, and thought-provoking.

Is Snowden a traitor subject to espionage charges? In some circles, that seems to be the case. And should his asylum in Russia be revoked, we could see that play out in an American court. Is he paranoid? How could you not be if you knew what he knows? Is he preening, self-servicing and smug? No. This guy has a belief that an Orwellian state of mind has infected the NSA, and no boundaries exist in the world where data is collected and molded to create profiles of each American citizen without their knowledge. If Facebook, Verizon, iPhone GPS, and a call to a friend can place me at the scene of a crime, does it mean I committed the crime, or was involved in a crime? Does it mean I know someone who committed a crime? Is this the pre-crime state featured in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report? Are we living that now? And more horrifying is the prospect that this metadata could be hacked and used by criminals to blackmail and commit wholesale financial chaos.

A fantastic experience and certainly the frontrunner for this year's Documentary feature Oscar, Citizenfour is must see material.