Citizenfour: the paranoia of Snowden & co will bore you to death

In simple entertainment terms Citizenfour isn’t as interesting as watching paint dry. It is more like watching someone else watching paint dry.

People with opinions on Edward Snowden tend to divide into those who think he’s one of the biggest heroes of all time and those who think he’s at least one of the worst patsies or traitors of all time. Either way it’s hard to imagine why either party would want to watch two hours of footage of him typing on a keyboard. And then typing some more. While the camera focuses on him from the other side of the keyboard. For a very long time.

Neither is it obvious why we should wish to watch footage of him staring out of a window. Or gelling his hair. Both are fine things to do, and director Laura Poitras doubtless thinks it shows us that Edward Snowden is a real, live human being. But why the longeurs? Do we have to see his entire hair-sculpting arrangements? Wouldn’t a before and after have done the job? But here is the problem – Laura Poitras’s film on Edward Snowden isn’t really film-making. In the same way that the activities of her co-conspirator Glenn Greenwald aren’t really journalism. This is activism.

Poitras, readers will recall, was the filmmaker who along with US activist Glenn Greenwald, was contacted by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in order that he could spill thousands of documents relating to British and American government data-gathering. ‘Citizenfour’ was the name he used in their early communications. Eventually they all met up in a hotel room in Hong Kong. Greenwald took the notes and Poitras took the footage.  Occasionally they were joined by Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian. The ‘action’ nearly all takes place in this one hotel room.