CITIZENFOUR

Colin Mahns colinmahns at riseup.net
Fri Oct 24 13:36:44 PDT 2014


Should've warned about spoilers ;)

Interesting to read your critiques of it Rich, looking forward to rereading your email after seeing the film.

Colin

On October 24, 2014 2:58:22 PM EDT, Rich Jones <rich at openwatch.net> wrote:
>Saw this last night - an obvious must-watch for all CPunks. I think it
>was
>probably the most important documentary film of all time. As Roger
>Ebert
>said, "it’s as if Daniel Ellsberg had a friend with a movie camera who
>filmed his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers every step of the way. Or
>if
>the Watergate burglars had taken along a filmmaker who shot their
>crimes
>and the cover-up that followed. Except that the issues “Citizenfour”
>deals
>with are, arguably, a thousand times more potent than Vietnam or
>Watergate." Truly, this is the Snowden story we have been waiting for
>since
>2013.
>
>The main revelation of the film, however, is what an incredible boob
>Glenn
>Greenwald is. I had some idea of this after seeing him give an
>extremely
>disappointing talk earlier this year, but I don't think I quite
>understood
>how useless this guy really is. He's constantly asking the wrong
>questions,
>displays a technical ineptness (to the point of deliberate ignorance)
>that
>obviously hampers the journalism, and at very step shows a very clear
>desire to keep the document cache to himself for careerist purposes. At
>one
>point Ewen MacAskill brings up the idea of there being a
>Wikileaks-esque
>document explorer, and Ed says that this would be the best outcome for
>the
>documents, and Greenwald quickly dismisses the idea to talk about his
>publishing schedule. I still have immense respect for him, but I found
>it
>very frustrating and quite cringey to watch him treat the whole event
>in
>news-cycle terms, while everybody around him is obviously thinking in
>historical context. For instance, there is a moment when they are
>prepping
>for Ed's first on-camera interview and he asks the reporters how much
>background he should give about himself, and they give different
>answers.
>Poitras asks for as much detail as possible, and Greenwald basically
>says
>that isn't important, just be short so we get a good soundbite.
>
>More importantly, I think the film also misses an opportunity to talk
>about
>*power*. This is something Edward himself has addressed, but it isn't
>really covered in Greenwald's reporting or books, and the only time
>it's
>mentioned in the film is when Jacob Appelbaum, while speaking before a
>European council of some sort, quite astutely comments that
>surveillance
>and control are one and the same. I think the film should probably have
>spent another hour or so investigating, naming and confronting those
>who
>profit from that control. Other than a few choice C-SPAN snippets, the
>enemy is completely faceless, which plays well for the pervading sense
>paranoia which envelops the film, but also leaves many questions
>unasked.
>Perhaps that's left as an exercise for the viewer, but I think the
>general
>take-away message from both the reporting and to a slightly lesser
>extent
>the film is that any "solution" will be token reform of policy and not
>dismantlement of power structures.
>
>Also, very nice of the Russian government to let Ed have his girlfriend
>back. I didn't know that had happened, and it gives a rather unexpected
>happy ending to a film which otherwise made me want to cry desperately.
>
>Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what you lot thought of it. (JY,
>you
>should throw a torrent up ASAP! I'm sure people will be screenshotting
>and
>analyzing all of the new document shots the film contains.)
>
>R
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