timespace coodinates: in 2018, Reality Winner was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for an unauthorized release of government information to the media after she leaked an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
The whole dialogue is based on an official transcript of the interrogation by the FBI agents.
It is probably one of the best movies I have seen this year. Why?
Simply because it offers such a stark look at the US National Security State and the Alphabet agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, etc), one that does not embellish or romanticize it. Usually, we think in terms of mysterious, funny, and charismatic agents in US cinema we think of Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks or of Scully and Mulder in X Files, and there is countless others.
But I dare say after the Snowden files, after Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange was indicted because he basically exposed the war crimes of the US, now awaiting to be extradited in the US, most techno-optimists and libertarians from the West have awoken to the cold truth that the NSS didn’t just wither away after the victory of liberal democracy in 1989. Reality Winner – perhaps encapsulates best the fate of many whistleblowers today. Again this is not about potential election tampering, nor is it about Russian interference or the obsession with Russian interference (real or not) in the election process. It is about secrecy and the culture of secrecy – during and after the Cold War. Official secrecy and security “clearances became a way to police behavior, such that homosexuals and others deemed to be deviant could be driven from government” or to ‘entrap’ with and paint poor black vulnerable groups as ‘dedicated fanatics’ such as in the case of Newburgh four, or in that other case Liberty City Seven, that also inspired a 2019 comedy directed by Christopher Morris.
Mishandling of classified documents is nothing new, and considering how the documents got stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, only one conclusion is possible: if you are rich and backed up by a powerful lobby, all lawyered upy, you can be super sloppy ( not saying this bc Reality Winner was sloppy or Joe Intercept handled her. For me it’s more about secrecy, making a case about nothing and how things can get easily turned around the leaker. If you are just a humble employee, a translator, and a woman, and even if you have an especially good track record, there isn’t much in your favor.
Another aspect is the fact that -in the whole world we are basically exposed to the domestic issues of the US. I am not talking about butterfly effects or fossil fuel methane and fracking here (altough that is an issue too), but about how various tensions and battles within American internal politics, bipartisan hearings, investigations, election campaigns, gerrymandering internal struggles – impact the rest of the planet. It is very funny that this already started in a fictional form with the Dallas soap opera series being streamed on Romanian National TV during the 1980s. It was an important moment and everyone in Socialist Romania, in the city or countryside, was familiar with the Texas-oil-rich Ewing family, with the machination of JR, with the troubles of Pamela Ewing, and practically fossil capitalism. So, in a sense, everyone has a stake in US politics, in who is going to be the next president. At the same time, the case of Reality Winner brings realism to this whole picture and re-situates this turmoil in the backyards of America for all of us to see. This is the NSS reality TV of our time!
TimeSpace Warps 