Edward Snowden is sitting in his Hong Kong hotel room on his bed, laptop in hand, with a red sheet over his head. He’s taking certain precautions. Sitting in the same room are journalists Glenn Greenwald and “Citizenfour’s” director Laura Poitras. Snowden jokingly condescends about how they’re not being completely secure online, and then very casually remembers that the VOIP phone in his room could quite easily be tapped. “I don’t think that anything would surprise me at this point,” Greenwald says in response.
Poitras’s documentary takes you so deep down the rabbit hole that just about anything could happen, and no surprise would be beyond belief. “Citizenfour” is a real life spy story, the stuff of “All the President’s Men” and “The Conversation” in which a slow, sinister, mysterious burn can reveal the greatest twists and controversies. It’s a chilling, tingling documentary about how Snowden first wrapped Poitras and Greenwald into this mess and how he finally got out. Though it is as tense, entertaining and emotionally powerful as any fictional movie, “Citizenfour” and its subject matter makes for also the most important movie of the year.
So much was made and said about Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the NSA. Was he a patriot or a traitor? What does it mean to have privacy in a digital age? What was up with Snowden’s stubbly beard? Continue reading “Citizenfour”