I am not at all surprised by the fact that Citizenfour was the winner of Best
Documentary Feature at the 2014 Academy Awards, mostly because of how much the
film and filmmaker became a part of the story. This is not a documentary which
tells us what happened, but instead was in the room being created as it
happened. With that being said, I would be lying if I said that I found endless
scenes of intelligent people talking in hotel rooms and clicking away on
computers half as exciting as the hype for this film claimed. This feels like a
film that was praised for the filmmaker’s involvement in the story and what it
stood for far more than the actual construction or presentation of the material
itself. Others may disagree (including the Academy, apparently), but I found
the actual filmmaking to be frustrating and dull compared to the tenseness of
the subject.
The film was
born out of director Laura Poitras’ communication with whistleblower and former
CIA agent Edward Snowden as he revealed classified information about the
invasion of privacy by the National Security Agency on the American public
after the attacks of 9/11. Joined by the journalist who broke the story, Glenn
Greenwald, Poitras eventually met with Snowden in the Hong
Kong hotel room he was hiding out in. Several days of interviews
led to the news break and a majority of the footage for this documentary.
Though the implications of these events carry weight, the actual footage can be
somewhat dry, while the editing is downright dull at times. Part of this seems
to be editing decisions, as the film begins to drag under the weight of scenes
in which the camera lingers on the face of Snowden as he stares at his laptop
screen in silence, only the sound of keyboard clacking between the moments that
he briefly fills in the camera with explanations. Others have claimed that this
is the most tense and exciting film of the year, but I had to work extremely
hard not to fall asleep during some of these extremely uneventful moments.
Even if you are
among those that find the non-events of the hotel room incredibly exciting for
the mere fact that they provide a behind-the-scenes perspective of Snowden’s
mentality during the admittedly significant news events, there are other
aspects of filmmaking which simply frustrated me. Groundbreaking as Poitras’
film may be from a journalistic point of view, her choices as a filmmaker were
somewhat questionable. There is no overall narrator for the film’s events,
though that may have helped for clarity and the momentum of the film during the
endless scenes of silent computer work, but Poitras does read some of the email
interactions though voiceover. Many people remarked on the odd behavior of
Poitras during her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, and I merely
attribute this to the director being more of a behind-the-scenes contributor,
which is why I can’t fathom her decision to do the voiceover herself.
Perhaps this
decision was a way of Poitras inserting herself into the story that she was
very much a part of, but I would have rather she handed the camera off to
someone else and appeared onscreen rather than offered the voiceover recording.
She is so soft-spoken in this narration that it made the urgency of the
material dissipate, not to mention the fact that the way she mumbles though the
material makes it nearly impossible to hear. Add in a lot of onscreen text for
other interactions which is impossibly small, and suddenly it became a struggle
to read and hear much of the information presented. I can understand why many
found the subject and the material exciting, but I found the approach in
filmmaking to be dull enough that I would only consider re-watching this film
if I were having trouble falling asleep. There is no arguing the historical
importance of this film’s subject, though I have a hard time believing this was
the best made documentary of 2014.
The Blu-ray
release provides high definition images of Snowden’s bed head messy hair, while
the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix does absolutely nothing to improve the
mumbled narration. The only improvement to the material seems to come in the
form of extras, which are fairly plentiful and dig deeper than the typical
self-promotional fluff beefing up the special features section of home
entertainment releases. There are about 17 minutes of deleted scenes, though
the 113-minute feature certainly didn’t need the additional content. Also
included is an additional short documentary about government spying directed by
Poitras, a 30-minute interview with the filmmaker by Film Society of Lincoln
Center, and an hour-long interview with Poitras, Greenwald and Snowden by the
New York Times.
Entertainment Value:
6/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 7.5/10
Historical
Significance: 9.5/10
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