Citizenfour (2014)
Directed by Laura Poitras
In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.
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What critics compared Citizenfour to
This story itself was more journalistically told in Laura Poitras ’ Academy Award-winning documentary “Citizenfour,” a fact that Stone seems to acknowledge, making Poitras a key character and leaving a clear trail for viewers to find her work.
Of course Snowden’s story is by now pretty familiar from news reportage and from Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary, Citizenfour.
Audiences who are already familiar with Citizenfour , Laura Poitras’s exemplary documentary on the same subject, will be struck by the fact that, in dramatising Snowden’s story, Stone seems to have leached out much of the drama.
What Oliver Stone's muddled biopic does best is remind you to revisit Citizenfour.
Anyone who has watched “Citizenfour,” which earned the Oscar for Best Documentary for 2014, will recognize the meeting that Stone recreates.
Yet, even if it's less gloriously beautiful than its predecessor, the new movie is a little warmer, and also includes a pretty basic, but powerful and relevant Edward Snowden-style argument against surveillance; if you missed Citizenfour, then maybe this will inspire you to catch it.
There are the occasional outliers—Shattered Glass (the story of fabulist former-New Republic associate editor Stephen Glass, starring Hayden Christensen)—but beyond the depths of television and documentaries, like the fifth season of The Wire (where Tom McCarthy, the director of Spotlight, played the resident fabulist journalist), and Laura Poitras’ gripping documentary on Edward Snowden, Citizenfour , pop culture is invested in portraying ink-stained wretches as noble fighters for the truth.