Snowden (2016)
A while back I went to see that Snowden movie. It was an enjoyable and good-looking movie. At the same time, it crystallized for me Hollywood's problem with movies about computer scientists, which is that they have only one template for them, one they will apply no matter how inappropriate to the story it may be. "Extraordinary genius misfit shows them all" was a stupid enough template when used in that terrible Turing movie, and being a computer science visionary was what made Alan Turing special. For Edward Snowden, that template was laughably wrong. What makes Edward Snowden special is not any particular genius. I'm sure he's very smart and was very good at his job. So was everyone else hired to do the kinds of jobs he did. That's not an area where the US government skimps. What makes Edward Snowden special is not being 1337 h4xx0r who can do things that other people can't, because he's not. What makes Snowden special is his conscience and his courage to draw his own conclusions about right and wrong in face of extreme ideological and practical pressures to go with the majority opinion. His story is more 12 Angry Men than Hackers. It bothers me that the film decided to fabricate a story of technical badassery to gloss up a gritty story of wrestling with what is right and what is justified.
Other notes from the person I saw the film with:
- The cheesy scenes of colleagues and mentors secretly cheering Snowden on don't ring true at all for him. His acquaintances in the NSA and CIA are the opposite of Edward Snowden fans. The people who work for those agencies do so because they believe in them, as Snowden once did, and largely consider Snowden a traitor, even suspecting him of ties to foreign governments. Again, this is where the film did his story a disservice: it's not that a man with skills nobody else had saw what everyone around him saw, it's that a man with skills everyone around him had saw what nobody else was willing to see.
- He would have thought that the scene at the end of the movie featuring the real Edward Snowden was scripted had he never heard Edward Snowden speak. That's just how the guy talks.
- Despite any other inaccuracies of the film, the way Snowden's colleague (the one with the backpack) dressed and spoke was eerily true to his experience. "I know that guy," he said with a rueful shake of his head. "I know five of that guy."
[ Original post |
comments | Reply at DWth ]
Other notes from the person I saw the film with:
- The cheesy scenes of colleagues and mentors secretly cheering Snowden on don't ring true at all for him. His acquaintances in the NSA and CIA are the opposite of Edward Snowden fans. The people who work for those agencies do so because they believe in them, as Snowden once did, and largely consider Snowden a traitor, even suspecting him of ties to foreign governments. Again, this is where the film did his story a disservice: it's not that a man with skills nobody else had saw what everyone around him saw, it's that a man with skills everyone around him had saw what nobody else was willing to see.
- He would have thought that the scene at the end of the movie featuring the real Edward Snowden was scripted had he never heard Edward Snowden speak. That's just how the guy talks.
- Despite any other inaccuracies of the film, the way Snowden's colleague (the one with the backpack) dressed and spoke was eerily true to his experience. "I know that guy," he said with a rueful shake of his head. "I know five of that guy."
[ Original post |
comments | Reply at DWth ]