Review: Citizenfour

City Paper grade: A-

The scariest thing you’ll see this Halloween is Edward Snowden swearing in disbelief at the end of Laura Poitras’ gripping, disturbing documentary. Citizenfour, whose core is the now-(in)famous meeting between Snowden, Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in a Hong Kong hotel room, offers, through Snowden, a kind of limited catharsis. Sure, he’s exiled from his own country and branded a traitor by many opposed to his disclosure of information on U.S. surveillance programs, but he’s done what he set out to do.

In the last scene, though, Greenwald tells him of another whistle-blower who claims the U.S. has more than a million people on various watch lists, to which Snowden can only respond, “That is fucking ridiculous.” It’s an unforgettable moment. No matter how jaded we are, there is always something that can shock us — and that shock is a powerful motivator. Poitras, who shared Pulitzers with Greenwald and Barton Gellman for reporting the Snowden story in the Guardian and the Washington Post, knows that last year’s scandal is this year’s fait accompli.

So instead of rehashing the information that’s already been disclosed, she gives us moments that drive home what happens when what was paranoid becomes a rational response to the facts. When a fire alarm sounds in the Hong Kong hotel, we might dismiss Snowden’s fear that it might be a trap, but when it sounds again and again, it’s harder to brush off. It’s easy to assume that the government’s ability to collect effectively infinite amounts of information will only harm bad people, but when it’s controlled by the same institution that determines what’s bad, the potential for misuse is equally boundless. We should be afraid, and Poitras’ essential film reminds us why.