NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden Documentary CITIZENFOUR is the Most Exciting Film of the Year

CITIZENFOUR is the new documentary by Laura Poitras, the first journalist whom National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden contacted about unveiling documentation that the US government was collecting massive amounts of information on people throughout the entire world through their use of the internet, cell phones and telephone calls. Like a real life version of The Matrix, the film begins with a series of typed computer screen conversations between the then-unknown source, identifying themselves only as “Citizenfour,” and Poitras, who is instructed to verify the security of her computer systems before further contact can be made. We are also introduced to William Binney, the NSA cryptographer who quit after over 30 years of service to reveal that shortly after 9/11 the US government decided to begin spying on all American and world citizens, a decision that bore forth the programs Snowden revealed in 2013. Snowden passed information on to journalists revealing NSA court orders for an indiscriminant amount of information from major communications providers including Verizon, as well as the passive internet data mining systems PRISM and TEMPORA, the latter created by British intelligence organization GCHQ.

Scored with a minimalist soundtrack provided by Nine Inch Nails, CITIZENFOUR pulsates along with a simmering tension. An early scene shows with what would be otherwise innocuous footage of a construction site turn insidious when revealed to be that of an NSA surveillance facility in Utah. Judges in San Francisco get up in arms when a Department of Justice attorney suggests they shouldn’t intervene after it was revealed in 2006 the NSA was spying on AT&T customers and some of those customers decided to sue. It is against this political backdrop that Snowden enters the picture, agreeing to meet Poitras in a hotel in Hong Kong.

Anticipation couldn’t be higher for Snowden to emerge, the stakes meticulously built to great heights through Poitras’s voice-over narration and the steady unveiling of the circumstances of what is declared in CITIZENFOUR, “The greatest violation of civil liberties in the history of America.” Poitras is instructed to employ the help of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who joins her along with journalist Ewen MacAskill from UK newspaper The Guardian, in Hong Kong over the week in which Snowden unveiled the now infamous NSA documents. What unfolds over the course of that week is fascinating, scary, and often hilarious, sometimes all at once. Jason Bourne himself couldn’t think up all the spy hijinks Snowden pulls to protect himself, the journalists and the information he is passing on to them, and they are frequently extremely entertaining.

What CITIZENFOUR shows that hasn’t been known before is the thought process behind Snowden’s decision to expose himself as the source so soon after the NSA documents are reveled, but Snowden is resolute about taking a stand and putting a face to his act of defiance against what he considers unconstitutional government oppression. Throughout CITIZENFOUR loss of privacy is equated with loss of civil liberty, and though Snowden presses the idea that the real story is about the American government and not himself, his stepping out from behind the curtain was an act of personifying a particular notion of idealism, an act that CITIZENFOUR brings even more fully to fruition. It doesn’t hurt that Snowden is charismatic, photogenic and youthful, and that the last shot we see of him in Hong Kong before going off into the political wilderness to seek status as a refugee is of him decked out all in black, Neo-style, slicking back his hair with all the vanity of a typical millennial.

The rest of CITIZENFOUR is devoted to furthering the context of the past year regarding the NSA scandal, including the cell phone tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Meanwhile Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras all continue their investigative journalism regarding “national security reporting.” Snowden travels from Hong Kong to Moscow, Russia where his passport is cancelled while in the transit zone of the airport, and it is in Russia he is granted asylum. The final scenes of the film take place in Moscow, providing closure on the story of Snowden, but not on the larger narrative that he revealed to the world. That story is just beginning, and with CITIZENFOUR we have a thrilling introduction to a saga larger than life and stranger than fiction; In short, the most exciting film of the year.