A documentarian and a reporter travel to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden.

Starring  Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, William Binney

Directed by Laura Poitras

Year 2014

  

For many of you, this will be rated a watch again and again and again. I understand that. I’m hovering over the idea of watching it occasionally, just to reveal it to others. I chose to watch it at least once for a few reasons though. One big reason is that it is extremely technical and relies on super intellectual verbiage and jargon. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy that sort of thing every now and then, but it is a movie one must be in the mood for and prepared to watch. I felt myself wishing that I had done more research on the whole subject. It is extremely interesting and really serves the public in it’s notion of how the whole situation went down in the beginning from the inside view.

I appreciated the lingeringly quiet moments that captured the real and raw emotions of everyone involved. It seems that everyone was trying their hardest to roll with everything calmly while things where blowing up around them. A lot of the shots focus on the human expression, especially with Snowden, to give you an idea of what he is going through and what he must be thinking as things unfold. The transitions between scenes are an initial part of the film giving you perspective of location and what the foreign feeling might have been toward the situation. I also very much appreciate that this documentary does not use, “in-your-face” techniques to try to sway you one way or the other. It just  lays things out for you to see and decide.

I would really do your homework though before you watch this so you are not totally lost in all the little details, and there are a lot of them! Overall I really enjoyed it as a learning tool and as a time in our history that should not be forgotten.

~ Watch Trailer ~ Rotten Tomatoes ~