Citizenfour
(2014)
I can only put the Best Documentary Feature Oscar victory of
Citizenfour down to voting for the
issue rather than the content. Which is okay, as far as that sort of thing
goes. The Academy Awards has long history of rewarding touchstone issues or
sentimental plights over actual quality, and the Edward Snowden “revelations”
that we are all surveyed all the time by the NSA, GCHQ or whoever it maybe are
as deserving of getting behind as any. It’s just a shame Laura Poitras’ film is
so shallow and undemanding, bringing of nothing new to what we already knew
(aside from the conclusion’s tantaliser of further, as yet unglimpsed, whistleblowing).
There’s little here anyone following the media storm that
erupted in the middle of 2013 won’t be familiar with, an this doesn’t even
attempt to be densely packed summation of the revelations to date and where we
stand (one seriously doubts that Oliver Stone’s fiction movie telling will
service this either, even given his previous form with JFK; it will probably end up close to the more reserved W.) So what about its value as an
insight into Snowden himself, the Citizenfour of the title? Poitras’ big claim
to fame for the doc is that she can show off the interviews she and Glenn
Greenwald conducted with Ed in June of that year, but do they provide any
insights we hadn’t hitherto gleaned?
Not really. If anything, they further emphasis how
extraordinarily prepossessed, collected, and immensely erudite Snowden is, from
his rehearsed-sounding motivation onwards. For someone who said in an email to
Poitras (she narrates his initial contact) that he is not a writer, you have to
wonder if he is kidding. Sure, there are glimmers of nervousness and tension as
fire alarms go off, phones ring and he eventually takes flight, but throughout
there is an infusion of calm, he says because he has already been through the
consequences of his actions.
And he probably has, but it isn’t really surprising some were
instantly crying foul, that he himself was a stooge of the Illuminati, witting
or otherwise, serving an agenda for which he dragged along a couple of journalists
after a big scoop (similar suggestions have been made of a previous biggest conspiratorial
scoop, Watergate; there are always conspiracy theories within conspiracy
theories).
The purpose, if he was merely a puppet? Some have suggested
it’s part of the elite’s occult methodology that they have to inform the
public, whose lack of revolt can be taken as tacit endorsement Alternatively,
the same revelations merely serve to emphasis the futility of resistance. While
Citizenfour raises the point about
the lack of anyone giving much of a shit when it comes down to it (certainly
not enough to peel back the intrusion, not that closing the stable door would
do any good now), or responding in an incendiary way, it never seeks to get to
grips with it. And that, surely, is the essential point to take away from this
in the time since those first interviews. It’s not the cries of Ed being a
traitor, or casting aspersions over his new life in Russia; it’s that nothing
he has put out there has made a jot of difference.
The most interesting parts of the doc don’t actually feature
Snowden, but one of his whistleblowing predecessors, William Binney. But the only surprise in this part is his
assertion that the NSA was not
enacting mass surveillance prior to 9/11. The cynic says of course they were; they were doing it as soon as they had the
capability. Such a view, naturally, reflects the passivity and impotence the
main players in the doc are concerned about, but one feels one is watching
slightly disingenuous responses when Greenwald oohs and ahs about the substance
of Snowden’s information; how did they not conceive this was happening anyway?
It’s not dissimilar to the way some still pursue the line that there was ever
any major belief during the WMD debacle that there was substance to those
claims; no one with a semblance of wits about them would have been taken in, as
it was right there for all to read between the lines at the time.
Generally, Poitras’
doc feels on the cobbled together side. Citizenfour
is smoothly accessible and watchable but shallow and loose fitting, it’s
observations and insights disappointingly bland coming from someone so close to
the material. Perhaps it will take someone else to really put this is in
perspective, probably someone not in
the mainstream media (so none of the producer credits, raging from HBO, to
Channel 4 or the ever-loving Soderbergh) and willing to consider all angles of
the story, and how far the tentacles may extend behind the scenes.
