REALITY
(directed by Tina Slatter, 2023)
**** (out of 5)
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> Sydney Sweeney is sheer dynamite as NSA whistleblower Reality Winner in this intense, claustrophobic docudrama.
. Honestly, this HBO film might have been better titled: “The Interrogation of Reality Winner”, though the play it is based on was called “This Is a Room”. No surprise that it came from the theater. It’s still a stagey film, considering the script was confined to the actual FBI transcripts, and the place limited to the geography of her own home. The year was 2017 in Augusta, Georgia. This 25-year old troublemaker was a former intelligence analyst, specializing in foreign languages- three of ‘em. Though they kept using her for what she considered the wrong specialty. She was translating Urdu, covering Iran when she trained for Pashto, planning to be working with the Afghan bureau.
. Reality’s nightmare begins with the rap on her car window as she arrives home to feed her animals- and ends a few hours later, with her being paraded away in handcuffs, to face the severe consequences of her impulsive act of conscience- the longest sentence ever handed down for the unauthorized release of sensitive government information to the media. Tired of working in what she considered the wrong sector, in an office where Fox News played non-stop on multiple monitors, and outraged by tRump’s firing of James Comey, she smuggled out a document about Russian monkey-wrenching in the 2016 election to the liberal online news site The Intercept. The rest, became history.
. It’s abundantly clear, that the moment they arrive, the two ambling primary investigators know everything about Reality’s crime, but they hem and haw and dither and pretend to be a disorganized shambles– so she underestimates them, I suppose, and is more inclined to let her guard down. They clumsily attempt to bond with her over their mutual love of dogs, and share meaningless small-talk to win her sympathy and humanize themselves. To some extent, it works.
. More and more, the camera closes in on Reality, eventually getting right in her face for long, unflinching periods- an effect that is very intense and discomforting. We can’t help but project ourselves into her shoes, and come to feel as intimidated as she is, as these professionals give her repeated chances to come clean- all, invitations she declines until they tell her they know about the email.
. The firm rests firmly on her shoulders, and Sydney Sweeney’s face (the face of the upcoming Spider-Woman), tells everything at every moment. It is a simply terrific performance that should be remembered at Emmy-time. You feel every bit of the intense pressure she is under, and it makes long stretches of inert and repetitive blather strangely compelling. (How many times to they tell Reality they have a search warrant before they finally show it to her? Three? Four?) The endless banalities become almost comical. It begins oh so slowly, yet retains your captivated attention.
. Still, the cumulative, suffocating effect of the confined setting and near real-time unfolding of the narrative, coupled with the unblinking close-ups of Ms. Sweeney, listening intently as she struggles to answer difficult questions she’d rather not answer, produces a mesmerizing effect of immersive dread. It’s a film that leaves you with many lingering issues to wrestle with, long after the closing credits run.
– Was Reality Winner a traitor or a whistleblower? Can the question be as simple as that?
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© Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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