Citizenfour (2014): Patriot, Traitor, Criminal, Hero

We all sort-of know the story of Edward Snowden, the US defense intelligence contractor, who beginning in June 2013, began releasing classified information that revealed, among other things, that the NSA (US National Security Agency) was secretly “spying” on millions of Americans’ emails, texts, phone calls and social media posts, with the cooperation of media giants such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon, and so forth; as well as on communications of many more millions throughout Europe and the rest of the world, with, and sometimes without, the consent of international partner agencies. Far fewer of us know the details of how these disclosures were made, or much detail about just what was disclosed.

Citizenfour is the much-anticipated movie about those things, by award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras. It is fascinating, frightening, informative, unabashedly partial, challenging, and thought provoking. I saw it with five other people. Going in, we were of varying opinions about Mr. Snowden and his actions, holding different philosophies regarding NSA surveillance programs generally, and particularly within the homeland. The film provoked a spirited discussion afterwards, and may have even altered some of our pre-conceived attitudes a little bit.

Poitras intended Citizenfour to be seen as the final installment of her trilogy of films about the post 9/11 'War on Terror'.  The first of these, My Country, My Country (2006) is about life in Iraq following the U.S. invasion of that country, focusing on a politically active physician and Sunni resistance to  the American occupation.  That picture was nominated for an Academy award in 2007 in the Best Documentary category. Her next movie, The Oath (2010), explores the intersecting lives of two Yemeni men, one of whom was Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard for several years, the other bin Laden’s driver - until he was captured in 2001 and sent to Guantanamo (and whose case eventually went to the US Supreme Court).

As you might imagine, Poitras’ work has been controversial - so much so that she became a target of  extensive surveillance herself, and for years was subjected to intense “scrutiny” by the Dept. of Homeland Security whenever she entered the USA. This included lengthy interrogations, searches, seizure of her computers and phone, and so forth. No formal criminal charges or citations ever followed these episodes. In 2012, the journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about Poitras’ travails for Salon, noting that she had been treated this way over forty times; a short while after that, a slew of documentary directors formally protested her harassment. (Apparently, the government backed off a bit with this spotlight on its actions.)

Edward Snowden approached Poitras in early 2013, in part because of this history, and in particular the Greenwald article. Snowden suggested that he had a wealth of data about super-secret, massive governmental surveillance programs, which he believed were illegal and unconstitutional, and which needed to be revealed.  He did not want to just release the documents to the world Wikileaks-style; he wanted to disclose everything to reputable journalists, to be ordered and released in their discretion, based on the public’s  need to know. The approach and all subsequent arrangements were carried out with stealth and caution, given the sensitive nature of Snowden’s information, his expectation of the likely government response to its disclosure, as well as his intimate knowledge of the surveillance apparatus.  Poitras was interested.

Her initial idea was for a film to be as much about Snowden himself as a leaker and whistleblower, as about the revelations he was bringing forth. Poitras’ style as a documentarian has always been to be behind the camera, not in front, and to present her subject’s story in a cinema-verité, fly-on-the-wall manner. Greenwald, by this time working for The Guardian, was brought in to be the journalistic frontman of the project. He had a long-term interest in and familiarity with intelligence issues, and no qualms about being in the limelight.

Citizenfour is, at its core, a chronicle of the two weeks in June 2013 when Snowden, Poitras and Greenwald huddled together in Snowden’s hotel room in Hong Kong, as Snowden explained and discussed the secret material he was turning over, answering questions, explaining his concerns, and wondering what would happen next. Greenwald and Snowden are front and center – Poitras is never seen. We hear her voice however, in the early parts, as she reads some of the email exchanges which started this ball rolling.

There is little in the way of onscreen action – it’s just a hotel room; but there is drama. Snowden expects to be arrested, he just doesn’t know when. He thinks he has a little time, but once the story breaks with the publication of Greenwald’s first article, the story explodes, it is everywhere, and the feeling is that “they” are closing in. Cell phone sim cards are removed. The hotel phone is unplugged, lest the spooks are able to listen in (even with the receiver on hook).  Snowden learns that his apartment has been searched, and his girlfriend interrogated.  Once the story is out, it doesn’t take long before the authorities figure out he is in Hong Kong.  Greenwald, the reporter, is besieged by a swarm of other reporters.  It’s cloak and dagger time in earnest now.

The film is constructed in three parts: the first part sets the scene; the second, central section, consists of the Snowden interviews; and the final part broadens out  to provide more context about the impact of the revelations politically, throughout the world. There are excerpts from tv news reports, political speeches and news conferences praising and condemning Snowden, and some stirring testimony from Greenwald and others before the National Congress of Brazil (August 2013) and the European Parliament (December 2013). There are a few scenes of Snowden in his Moscow apartment, once he has been granted asylum there.

Some of my group felt that Citizenfour was a bit overlong and/or dragged at times. (I did not find that to be true for me.) All found it interesting, however.

Snowden is not particularly charismatic, and he keeps saying that he does not want to be the story - the unlawful, overbroad government spying should be the story.  But he is fascinating to watch all the same, even just propped up on his bed in a teeshirt and rumpled pants, his hair uncombed, remnants of a room service breakfast or lunch off to the side, and laptops everywhere. For one thing, he is very well spoken, quite composed, obviously very bright and compellingly sincere. For another, the stakes seem high.  At one point the fire alarm goes off in hallway, and there’s this moment of, not panic exactly, but a look in his eyes and a catch in his voice that seems to say, “Is this it?”  Still, we get to know very little about the inner Snowden: What makes him tick? What, aside from his belief in a moral imperative impelled him to do this thing?

And then, of course there are the disclosures themselves: the monumental spying and information gathering being conducted on all of us and on citizens of many other nations, the overwhelming majority of whom have done no wrong, and are not even suspected of wrongdoing. Interestingly, we learn as much or more about the scope and impact of the NSA programs from Greenwald and others' testimony in the third part of the movie, as we do from Snowden interviews. What do we make of these  operations? Is this the price of security, of freedom? Are these terms relative or absolute? Do we demand absolute, one hundred percent security from terrorism, at all costs? How much can we dilute our freedoms – of speech, of association, of privacy, of the right to dissent – before they become meaningless?

Citizenfour is playing at select theaters nationwide. In the Bay Area it can be seen in SF, Berkeley, Menlo Park, and San Rafael. 112 minutes.

Here is an interesting article about Laura Pointras, recently published in the New Yorker.