Reality (3/5 Stars)

 

I am a long-time fan of the San Francisco 49ers and as I write this review, our quarterback Brock Purdy is being considered a candidate for the NFL Most Valuable Player award. Now, this award, not unlike the Oscars or any other awards given out for movies, have an inherent absurdity to them. After all, football is a team sport in the same way that movies are a team production. A good football team and a good movie comes about from the successful collaboration of a team. With that in mind, one may think it does the team a disservice by elevating one member of it and declaring that they are the most valuable person there. It may make sense if the team was atrocious except for this one guy who clearly was the only one trying, but these awards aren’t generally given out to individuals that took part in losing teams or bad movies. Indeed, the team winning and the movie being good are generally prerequisites to the individuals gaining recognition. So by definition seemingly, the individuals who win these awards that provide nothing but individual recognition do so with lots of help. 

Having said that, there is an obvious way that Brock Purdy is the MVP of the NFL, one which is never discussed, but probably should be. Brock Purdy’s salary this year is $870,000. The other contenders for MVP Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson are making $40,000,000 and $32,000,000 respectively. Now, it is arguable that Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson are better quarterbacks than Brock Purdy. But are they $30,000,000 a year better than Brock? Surely not. Dollar for Dollar, Brock is the Most Valuable Player in the NFL by an irrefutable margin. I bring this up in the context of a movie review about “Reality”, an HBO movie that came out earlier this year, because by that logic, “Reality” could be the best movie of the year. It is a good movie that is well produced. It does not feel or look like it was made on a shoe-string budget, but considering what is in it, you may well be correct in assuming that it is one of the cheapest movies HBO has ever made.

“Reality” is a great experiment in fidelity to source material. On June 3, 2017, a Farsi translator working for the federal government named Reality Winner was met at her home by FBI agents. One of the agents shows Reality a tape recorder and makes it clear that the subsequent conversation is being recorded. The resulting transcript, thereafter made public with redactions of sensitive material, became the source material of a play. That play then became the source material for this movie. The interesting thing from both the play and the movie is that they follow the transcript verbatim (except for that one scene near the end in pink). The entire movie takes place at Reality’s house, first outside in the yard and then in a nondescript back room. The dialogue couldn’t be more natural. Indeed, it is literally natural since it is a verbatim adaptation of a recording. It even has all those quirky lines and asides that you would never find in a real movie, unless it is a “Fargo”-type movie that throws in random stuff to seem more real. For example, Reality keeps an AR-15 in her house. It is pink. 

The verbatim transcript is inherently dramatic. The F.B.I agents inform Reality that they have a warrant to search her house and would like to ask her questions, but they don’t immediately tell Reality why. They want to see if Reality will tell them the truth or lie to them. Reality for her part goes along with what is happening without much objection seemingly because she is holding out hope that the FBI aren't here for that reason. If you know nothing about the real life case, then like myself, you may find yourself wondering what this is about, in a good suspenseful way.

Both sides are playing games and it comes out in the words and the performances. Reality Winner is played by Sydney Sweeney. At first, one wonders why an actress as beautiful as Ms. Sweeney is being cast in this particular role. But apparently the real Reality is young, blonde, and does cross-fit, so it is a plausible choice of casting. Given that there has been no money spent on production value, writing, or special effects, Ms. Sweeney, by herself, probably comprises the largest part of the budget. The lack of everything else puts the focus directly on her, most of the time in close-up. Ms. Sweeney rises to the challenge in a way that is generally not asked of her (or most actors) in other projects. It is a very good performance.

The agents, played by Josh Hamilton (Terribly Polite White Guy with Glasses) and Marchant Davis (Muscular Black Man) inspire confidence in the F.B.I. They have an agenda but don’t use intimidation tactics to get what they want. Indeed, they succeed in their goals through their sheer professionalism. They are upfront with Reality that the conversation is being taped (if Reality didn’t know that she was being taped, then the evidence acquired in the transcript would probably not be able to be introduced as evidence in a prospective trial) and are exceedingly polite (they treat her animals/pets with care). 

This professionalism allows them to better take part in certain manipulations, all entirely legal. They present Reality with a series of false choices. The agents tell Reality that they have a warrant to search her house and that they are willing to show it to her. They don’t actually show Reality the warrant though. They merely tell her that she can choose to see it. Reality doesn’t choose to see it because, presumably, she doesn't want to let on that this search may be about that reason. The agents tell Reality that they need to talk to her and that they can have that conversation at the house or at the nearby F.B.I field office.That seems straightforward enough unless you understand that Reality has a third choice that isn’t presented: she could not talk at all and seek the advice of legal counsel. Reality “chooses” to have this conversation at the house. The best manipulation is the agent’s statement to Reality that they already know what she has done it and how she did it, so the “what” and “how” do not need to be discussed. Instead, the agents explain, they want to know “why” she did it.

Do the agents already “know” the “what” and “how” of the thing they suspect Reality did? That we will never know. But once a perp starts answering the question of “”why”, no further questioning as to "what" becomes necessary. Implicit in a “why” answer is the admission that the act was done in the first place. For all those interested, “why” doesn’t matter and the agents probably only care about that question to the extent that it answers the question of whether Reality was working alone or in concert with other possible whistleblowers and/or foreign agents. What the agents wanted was an admission from Reality that she did the act in the way they supposed she did it. By the end of the interrogation, they have that admission. These agents are very good at their jobs. All of this, if written by a screenwriter, would be very well written. I can only wonder what the producer of this movie felt like when he first read the transcript. I suspect it would be like finding a puddle of oil seeping up from the ground in a field. There is a clear dramatic arc to the story and it wrote itself. You don’t have to pay the F.B.I or Reality anything for the writing or the rights. It is publicly available information.

The transcript is redacted to remove all indication of what classified information it was that Reality leaked to the press. But we now know what it was: Reality leaked a classified report detailing Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election and she appears to have done it right after Donald Trump fired F.B.I. director James Comey for not publicly stating that this interference did not occur. It is a credit to the F.B.I. that the substance of the leak did not affect their determination to enforce the law of the land. It was apolitical for the F.B.I. to prosecute Reality even though what she leaked vindicated the former F.B.I director. It is a discredit to HBO that it does not follow the F.B.I. 's apolitical lead. A subscript to the movie written by HBO infers a belief that Reality was unfairly prosecuted. Given that Reality committed the crime, the only reason I can see why HBO could take this stance is political. Since the leak confirmed HBO’s politics, HBO decided her behavior is forgivable. 

Write it on the blackboard a thousand times: An open society, that thing that makes the “free world” “free” is not about policy but process. It doesn’t matter so much what the result is, but how one gets there. It matters that the law is applied to everyone equally regardless of the sympathy we may or may not have for their cause. Reality leaked a state secret. Sure, it was not an immature data dump the likes of Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks. She leaked only one article on a narrow topic, but still her behavior is not to be tolerated. One may contrast the way she went about it with that of Edward Snowden who leaked far more information, but took ownership of the leak immediately and described how it was done. This would go far in letting the government know that he was acting alone and that there wasn’t a whole network of moles to worry about. Then Snowden left the country. He knew he had committed a serious crime and had forfeited his government job and indeed his citizenship by doing so. Reality, here, thought she could leak a state secret and keep her career. I hope her actions and what happened to her can serve as a lesson to us all. Just don’t do it.