Citizenfour Review
By David Kempler
A Very Solid Citizen
If you are a news junkie or at least someone who pays attention to current events, you will at least be aware of who Edward Snowden is. For the rest of you, he is the man who has caused an uproar inside our government by revealing some of the inner workings of the NSA, much to the chagrin of a lot of our leaders.
Actually, that could also describe Julian Assange, but while Assange has let out sensitive materials, Snowden's revelations are less about specifics and more about general abuses of American citizens by those in power.
Laura Poitras's documentary, "Citizenfour" relates how Snowden anonymously contacted her using the titular pseudonym. He chose her because of her own history as a muckraking journalist and filmmaker and particularly because of her own misgivings about the excesses of the so-called War on Terror.
Arrangements were made for Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, who was then a journalist for The Guardian to meet with Snowden, who was hiding from the U.S. government in a hotel room in Hong Kong. Snowden had to hide because he had revealed that the U.S. was involved in the largest-scale mass surveillance operation in the history of the planet. Over 1.6 million Americans are currently on a government watch list according to Snowden.
We first see Snowden in his hotel room. He comes across as extremely smart, sincere, and he has an affability about him. Snowden understands the very serious position he has placed himself in. The United States has charged him with espionage under an old law from the World War I era. The charge doesn't pass the sniff test, but try telling that to the people in control.
Most of the footage of "Citizenfour" takes place in Snowden's hotel room and it plays out like a first-class political thriller. We learn that what has driven Snowden to this point is scale of the invasion of privacy of Americans started by Bush and accelerated by Obama.
Snowden is a whistle-blower in every sense of the word. We have always been taught to look up to whistle-blowers as people interested in the greater good, no matter their political affiliation. The point of Poitras's film is that there is nothing partisan about the actions of Snowden.
He is putting his life on the line because he believes that our freedoms have been eroded to a point that is not to be tolerated. He pins his hopes that the bulk of American citizenry will feel likewise. Before I saw this documentary, I was not fully aware of all of the details that surround this case. No matter your political beliefs and affiliations, it is difficult for me to believe that anyone would be okay about the things Snowden has exposed. Snowden, Poitras and Grenwald have done us a great service with "Citizenfour". See it and tell me I am wrong.
