CITIZENFOUR (Laura Poitras). 114 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (November 7). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
The Edward Snowden whistle-blower case made global headlines last year, and rightfully so. Snowden’s revelations about America’s secret data-collection programs and the complicity of foreign governments in those efforts offered unsettling proof of the nation’s slide toward a surveillance state.
Snowden was aided in his efforts by the filmmaker Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country and The Oath), who connected him with journalist Glenn Greenwald. The three met in a hotel room in Hong Kong for eight days Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour – named for the handle Snowden used when he first reached out to her – is mostly set during that window of time.
Much of the film consists of footage of Snowden explaining the range and depth of American data-mining to an increasingly horrified Greenwald. If it sounds dull, it isn’t. A moment when Snowden takes precautions to avoid having his image captured by a laptop’s webcam, and Greenwald slowly realizes the implications of that action, is as -unnerving as any contemporary espionage thriller.
The other triumph of Poitras’s documentary is that it gives Snowden back his humanity. No cartoon traitor or fanatic, he’s a soft-spoken, thoughtful and profoundly intelligent young man – a conscientious objector in the face of Orwellian insanity. We are all in his debt.
