Edward Snowden
“CITIZENFOUR” My rating: A- (Opens Nov. 7 at the Tivoli)
114 minutes | MPAA rating: R
By now we have absorbed the knowledge that our government is — through mass data collection programs — spying on each and every one of us. We’ve numbed the shock with grim jokes.
“Citizenfour,” though, reignites the outrage. Laura Poitras’ spellbinding documentary takes us back a year to the beginning of the Edward Snowden controversy and places us at the heart of the situation.
In January 2013 Poitras — maker of “My Country, My Country” (about the 2005 elections in Iraq) and the 2010 war-on-terror doc “The Oath” — began receiving emails from a mysterious individual identified only as “Citizenfour.” After establishing a variety of cryptographic and security protocols, Citizenfour announced he had a treasure trove of top secret government information depicting “the greatest system for oppression in the history of man.”
Citizenfour was, of course, NSA computer expert Edward Snowden, who told Poitras that “my personal desire is that you paint the target on my back.”
By June the 29-year-old was holed up in a Hong Kong hotel. Joining him was Poitras and Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill, well known for their stories piercing the veil of government secrecy.
As the journalists interviewed Snowden over several days, Poitras (who goes unseen) kept her cameras running. The resulting film is like eavesdropping on secret history.
Like just about everyone else, I wondered about Snowden’s motives in amassing and then releasing all this secret information.
Is he a megalomaniac? A head case? An America-hating traitor?
After watching “Citizenfour” I’m calling him a hero.
Butler's Cinema Scene 