Angelbert, Ambal

SNOWDEN REFLECTION

After injury kills his dream of being a soldier, computer whizz Edward Snowden (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) finds success as a government intelligence agent — and love with a spirited
photographer (Shailene Woodley). But when he learns about the NSA’s secret global
surveillance, he risks it all to reveal the truth.
Snowden is a divisive figure. Either, you see him as a freedom-fighting American putting his
life at risk or he’s a low-down ex-NSA/CIA employee who risked important information for
media attention. Oliver Stone’s new biopic, featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene
Woodley, Rhys Ifans and Nick Cage is firmly in the former camp.
The film follows the gripping real-life story of Edward Snowden – the whistleblower who
released huge swathes of info about his country's programme to hack private information
from anywhere in the world. Much like the 2014 documentary CitizenFour by Laura Poitras,
the film follows the footsteps of Snowden locked away in a hotel in Hong Kong after meeting
with Poitras and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald to hand over evidence of the
programmes. The film also shows us what the documentary couldn’t: dramatisations of
Snowden’s relationship with long-term girlfriend Lindsay Mills, as well as his roles within
the CIA and NSA.
The scenes in the Hong Kong hotel room - taken almost directly from Poitras' brilliant
documentary – are slightly better than the dramatised elements, but still contain cheesy
moments of explanation and musing. Of course, we can’t tell how realistic the film is in
depicting the relationship between Snowden and his partner, and perhaps Snowden isn’t as
self-righteous and selfish as the film depicts him, but Stone’s interpretation is one-
dimensional, hammy and with a heavy dose of misogyny. It’s an engaging film, but the cold
lens of a documentary serves it better than the rose-tinted spectacles of this fawning
depiction.