Reality

Bites

Reality
USA 2023
Directed by Tina Sutter
Vertigo Films

Warning: I guess if you don’t know the real life events behind this one, as I certainly didn’t, then technically this review does have spoilers.

“The FBI documented the following events with an audio recorder.
The dialogue in this movie is taken entirely from the transcript of that recording.”
From Reality

It’s been said that drama is no better manifested than in real life. I’m not 100% sure about that myself. I think drama is very much a fashioned/crafted art form trying to capture the compelling tension of everyday life, even if the events being written and performed are not based on a true incident. Reality, is based on a true incident... and it’s also based on a play ‘written’ by this film’s director (who also co-wrote the script). I put written in inverted commas because, the way a play or a film is staged, performed and, in the case of a movie, shot and edited (amongst other things) is the art which informs the drama, so to speak.

So the original play was called Is This A Room? And it’s based on an FBI audio transcript, lasting just under an hour and a half, on the real life events of the questioning in her home and, subsequent arrest, of ex-military translator and former intelligence specialist Reality Winner in 2017. And when I say based on, I mean the dialogue script and running time of the film is verbatim from those recordings. Although they are not the actual recordings heard themselves... the actors in this one just speak the lines and, in the case of actress Sydney Sweeney who plays Reality, taking the performance to the nth degree in that she would talk with the real Ms. Winner on zoom calls and study her mannerisms and so on as she was talking to her. She looks a little bit like her too... something which becomes apparent when real life artefacts are used on some of the images thrown up on the screen for illustrative purposes or to push a point.

Okay, so we have Sweeney as Winner, Josh Hamilton as Agent Garrick, Marchánt Davis as Agent Taylor and Benny Elledge as Unknown Male. Plus a dog and a cat, representing Reality’s pets, who hold things up slightly when they need to be tied up and put into controlled situations before a room in the house is used for Reality’s initial interrogation, which is what this film is all about. And all of the actors in this movie are absolutely great. And, let’s face it, if drama does stem from reality then the drama inherent in the dialogue provided by the FBI recording in Reality, is certainly one step closer to drama than, well, normal reality... you know, with a lower case r.

But, of course, it’s drama as opposed to ‘just reality’ so, there are all manner of visual and audio contrivances (such as a musical underscore) to enhance that drama. Just as there are also elements to constantly remind the audience that they are watching a true series of events unfold in real time, more or less as they happened.

Of that latter technique we have the time settings given precisely. For example, after an opening bit of footage showing Reality working at her desk in an office which constantly has Fox News on the TV screens, something used by her later to try and explain her motivations, we jump into the main meat of the film which takes place, as the screen tells us... 25 days later. June 3, 2017 - Augusta, Georgia. Then, throughout the movie, at random moments, we jump cut to an on screen graphic depicting the sound waves of the recording as the conversation (or not) is being spoken. In addition to reminding the audience that they are essentially listening to a version of a direct transcript, these are accompanied by a time stamp somewhere on the screen. Although, since it’s such a useful device, the time stamp is not solely used in the scenes depicting the graphics. So we can see, for instance, that it’s not until 4.07pm, 37 minutes into the recording, until she is accompanied from the front yard area into her home to begin the actual interrogation.

And, though the film is relatively impartial to the rights and wrongs of the situation... we know it’s almost an hour into the film before she admits to her crime. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Another, truly wonderful moment of artistry in the mechanics of how the script of the transcript is presented lies in the parts of the recording which the general public are not allowed to know about. At one point, we are shown a text of the conversation we are listening to and part of the recording has been redacted... there’s then a weird, scribbly high pitched computer gibberish sound made when the cursor travels over that part. And then, once the director has put that audio signifier into the audience’s mind that anything featuring that sound effect is a redacted part of the audio as it stands, she then pushes that angle visually. So as we are watching the conversation unfold between the actors, whenever somebody says something which has a redacted portion in it, the sound cue returns and they are deleted visually from the screen for the few seconds that part of the dialogue is being said. There’s a fantastic moment where the sound effect is going off and Sydney Sweeney walks towards the camera, left of screen and, as the redaction ends, we find she is face to face with another character in the room. So, yeah, for a directorial debut in the motion picture industry, I have to hand it to Tina Sutter for fully grasping how to play around with the boundaries of the cinematic language. This hopefully won’t be her last movie.

The only other thing I will say about the content of the film/play... which has Reality Winner’s full endorsement (although, I believe she feels to actually watch it herself and relive the encounter may be too traumatic), is that I think it’s somewhat open to interpretation as to whether you come out on her side or not. Yes, she was definitely found guilty of passing on a printout of a classified document to a newspaper which proved the election results were hacked and rigged... and got a ‘five years and change’ prison sentence for it. At least that’s my understanding of it... as regular readers may remember, politics just isn’t my thing. The flip side as hinted at in the movie’s final moments seems to be in defence of the subject of the film, perhaps asking the question... was that not doing more of a public service to the American people by letting that truth out there than if it hadn’t got out?

I don’t have an answer to that, at least not an official one but, yeah, it’s a hard call. I kinda wish there were no secrets held by any government agency anywhere (I want to know more about the space aliens) but there’s also probably a very compelling case to be made that many things classified at this level of secrecy is a necessity, I would imagine.

At the end of the day, all I know for sure is two things. One is that I really love that a movie has to have a credit in the final roll that holds the title ‘video glitches’. Secondly, that Reality is an absolutely riveting piece of drama and I would recommend it to most people. Whether justice is served in terms of being a drama closer to reality and whether justice was served to Reality, is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, I think.

The Obama Biden Mysteries

Biden His Time

Hope Never Dies
by Andrew Shaffer
Quirk Books
ISBN:  9781432858414

Hope Rides Again
by Andrew Shaffer
Quirk Books
ISBN:  9781683691228

Anybody who knows me or who has read this blog for a substantial amount of time will know I know nothing about politics and don’t care for it one way or another. Whoever is in power is just as bad as the last lot it seems to me... with a little added caveat here acknowledging that the current UK government is perhaps the worst, stupid and possibly downright evil bunch we’ve ever had in this country. Same thing goes for US politics although, I have to say, I did have a soft spot for Obama... although I don’t know anything much about him, nor about his former vice president Joe Biden (outside the memes I saw on Twitter, once the Trump monster had been voted in). The point is, I wouldn’t know a Republican from whatever the opposing teams are called. Over here people refer to right wing and left wing but, honestly, I’ve got no idea what the difference is between the two and have never had enough interest in the subject to try and seek some understanding when people have tried to explain it to me, using other words equally shrouded in political mystery which seem completely useless unless you are in some kind of special club.

But I wanted to give a short shout out to a couple of books which I received for my birthday but which, actually, were already on my ‘to buy sometime soon’ list. Hope Never Dies and its sequel, Hope Rides Again, are two novels by Anthony Shaffer which tell, in much humourous detail, the fictional adventures of ex-President Barack Obama and ex-Vice President Joe Biden, after their terms in office came to a close. And they’re action packed, murder mysteries where the two, inadvertently find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of a bullet, while solving crimes together à la Scooby Doo. And who couldn’t resist a proposition like that, right? But, of course, given my previous paragraph, I have to warn the reader here that a good three quarters of the jokes probably went over my head. I have no point of reference for a lot of this stuff.

But the novels are kinda cool anyway and, certainly, a fun read. They are both told in first person by Joe Biden, in a kind of deliberately ham fisted, hard boiled inner monologue style. In the first one called Hope Never Dies, Amtrack Joe, as he’s often known, finds that one of his old conductor friends has been killed and left to be squished by an upcoming train... it’s up to him and his somewhat estranged, former friend Obama, to investigate when the police fail to realise just what’s going on. In the second book, Hope Rides Again, after Obama’s blackberry is stolen, a possible young suspect is shot up and recovering in hospital with a potential killer lurking in the background. Biden and Obama only have about a day to investigate the case before other commitments bring their time in Chicago, on the night before St. Patrick’s Day, to an end.

And it’s great stuff. I’m never quite sure, as I’m reading, whether it’s supposed to be pro or con Biden and Obama but it pitches up as something with its tongue stuck so firmly in its cheek you have to wonder when the blood will start flowing from the tasty organ’s awkward penetration. Biden is very much the main man of the narrative thrust and, obviously, the prose always follows him on his side of the adventures. Obama is very much depicted as ‘the cool president’ personae, with athletic qualities and brains to match. For example, when “An impossibly long speedboat entered the frame, cutting through the surf like a buttered bullet.”, Obama is depicted waterskiing behind. Biden on the other hand... well, Biden bends down in a field looking for a piece of evidence and his knee pops, causing him to flail around on his back like a stranded turtle.

The books are a joy to read, actually, with passages like... “That didn’t mean I wasn’t game for some Hardy Boys hijinx.” and, when the two are in disguise at one point and Obama corrects Biden about how they look saying, “We’re not dressed like idiots, we’re dressed like teenagers?”, Biden responds with, “There’s a difference?” And there’s a wonderful clichéd moment when Biden’s life is saved when a bullet hits the pocketed Medal Of Freedom which Obama gave him, instead of going through his heart.

There are some cool pop culture references throughout the stories too, concerning the ‘Democratic Duo’. For example, a moment where Obama uses his top secret information about what really happened at Roswell as a bargaining chip for the next lead from an informant. And, honestly, I had no idea the Americans knew who Tony The Tiger was and that they had Frosties over there but, yeah, the various references... they’re gr-r-r-reat! Perhaps my favourite joke, though, comes as a nice little nod to everyone’s favourite timelord, or more specifically his TARDIS. When Obama and Joe go to a speakeasy, they have to enter through an entrance in an imitation doorway of a British Police Telephone Box (which is what the TARDIS also appears as, due to a faulty ‘chameleon circuit’). As Joe goes in and down through this entrance he makes the comment to the reader... “It was bigger in the inside than it looked...”, which any follower of Doctor Who would know is, more or less what every companion says in some form or another when they enter the dimensionally transcendental space and time machine.

And that’s me just about done on Hope Never Dies and Hope Rides Again. A lot of Joe’s time in the second novel, set a few years ago, is about him trying to make up his mind whether he should run for office and, now he’s actually the president in real life, I’m guessing the writer may hold off on writing anymore in this series for now but... yeah, I kinda hope not. I found these books hugely entertaining and would love to read another. Definitely worth a look if you’re a fan of comedy mystery novels, for sure.

Miss Sloane

Entertaining Miss Sloane

Miss Sloane
France/USA 2016
Directed by John Madden
UK cinema release print.

I didn’t know about Miss Sloane until a couple of weeks ago when I started noticing the posters and saw the trailer. This is possibly because the film is already 5 months behind the US release and, it turns out, was openly boycotted by the US gun lobby on it’s release... effectively killing its box office takings. If I’d have known that pro-gun people were that afraid of this powerful and entertaining movie then I would probably have rushed quicker to the cinema to see it. As it is... the pull of this one for me is that I’d seen Jessica Chastain, who plays the title character Elisabeth Sloane, in a few genre favourites such as Mama (reviewed here) and Crimson Peak (reviewed here) and I like her a lot. I also think she’s a real powerhouse of an actress and nowhere is that more ably demonstrated than in this riveting performance as a woman who has earned a big reputation as the ‘go to’ person to hire to lobby for you on particular issues in US parliament. Forgive me, by the way, if I get some of this political talk wrong as... I really don’t understand politics and the fact that I am willing to even half talk about them here maybe shows you that this is a film I really liked.

Now, the film starts of from a framing story which renders everything leading up to that framing device... which we catch up to before flashing back again every twenty minutes or so... as Chastain’s lead character is under fire in a trumped up Senate hearing investigating the illegitimacy of her ‘methods’ to successfully lobby against a specific issue. The film then starts proper as Miss Sloane’s agency is asked by gun lobbyists to ‘sell’ the idea of making firearms easily available as a positive thing to the women of America. However, this is something that really goes against the grain and she is given an opportunity, which she immediately takes, of quitting her firm and taking herself and as many of her team who want to go with her to a rival company to lobby for the exact opposite.

Now I’m not going to pretend that the issue of owning guns or not is a simple one. The bottom line is nobody should have them but the reality is... someone always will. It’s complex and I am far too naive and idealistic to get into that... especially in a film review. I mention it here to clarify that Chastain’s character is lobbying to make guns harder for the common thug on the street to have access to... by providing more rigorous checks before firearms are allowed to be bought. Which makes good sense to me as a short term workaround, to be sure.

So anyway, her and about half of her team are now working on behalf of something called the Brady Campaign for a firm headed by Rodolfo Schmidt, played here by Mark Strong, in direct rivalry to the people in Sloane’s old company. And there’s one of the reasons right there why this film is so electric. Not to take anything away from the other cast members in this movie, all of who do a blistering job and include stalwart John Lithgow as the senator leading the framing hearing but... Chastain is always brilliant and, frankly, Mark Strong just impresses me more and more every time I see him in anything. Together with some absolutely amazing costars, they contribute to an already powerful script full of ear catching dialogue, which is so beautifully pulled together by the director, John Madden.

The pacing on the film is almost '1930s screwball' furious and the performances, as I’ve said, all superb as the iceberg cool Miss Sloane is shown as the almost emotionless machine of a lobbyist using all kinds of espionage tricks to establish the outcome that she wants. This is all set up with Chastain’s opening, framing dialogue to the majority of movie, which also plays in the trailers from what I remember. And its just an absolutely brilliant and enchantingly well made ride but there is one slight weakness to the movie which, in this particular case, makes the film even stronger...

To explain that; what I mean is that although the film seems to be quite twisty and turny... it’s really not. The writers spend the first half  of the story setting up their ‘infallible’ title character before they start to show things going wrong for her and building on her vulnerability... except, if you’re like me, then you’ll known that the vulnerability is not necessarily a crack in the personae at all. Alas, the film is extremely obvious and, I have to say, within the first five minutes I had pretty much figured out what the denouement of the movie was going to be and, as it turns out, I was dead right. Now normally that would (and all too often does, unfortunately) annoy the heck out of me and, for the first third of the movie... I was kind of stewing over the obviousness of certain ploys the writers were using to try and distract me from the end game but, as I watched and the dialogue, acting and cinematography continued to win me over, I realised that if there was any other ending to this movie than the one they were building towards, I would have been incredibly disappointed in the film. So although I usually find the obvious ending to be a let down, here it was a welcome conclusion... my initial perceived weakness of the script became its strength, for me.

So it has all of that going on for it and, frankly, it’s just a gorgeous film visually too. The director uses the nice vertical set ups of walls and glass in the interior scenes to compartmentalise certain elements of the frame (as do a lot of great directors) and he does it in an interesting way. For instance, there’s a gorgeous shot which I wished he’d have lingered on longer, just after Mark Strong has sent Sloane’s team home for the evening to have a rest. It’s near the end of the movie and shows Sloane standing in the corridor full length on the left of the screen and, through and past the glass corridor coming down the middle/right side, Mark Strong siting down with his back to the camera and by the size and division of those two people in the frame, making a visual metaphor about how Strong’s character has begun to lose faith in Miss Sloane’s ability to win and using the mise en scene to visually (and presumably subconsciously, for some people) show the distance between them. It’s a wonderful shot in a film full of many such cool moments.

Max Richter’s, sadly unreleased on CD, score to this is kind of a minimalist masterpiece laying, stylistically, somewhere between Philip Glass and Hal Hartley’s musical compositions and it works really well here. It doesn’t overstate the obvious and it matches the icy veneer of the title character beautifully when it needs to. It highlights the things it needs to and stays out of the way when scenes call for it and it’s yet another score which highlights the need for this composers work to be released on a proper physical medium like compact disc.

And I don’t have much more to say on this one but I will say that, if you’re a fan of cinema and the way it can sometimes tackle important issues like corruption at the heart of a country, then you’d be really silly to miss this one while it’s doing the rounds. It’s not the kind of film I would usually repeat watch but I suspect I’ll be picking up the Blu Ray of this one at some point. Obvious or not, it deserves to be seen by a wider audience and it certainly doesn’t deserve the stupid numbers it got at the US box office. It also firmly seals the reputations, as far as I’m concerned, of Jessica Chastain and Mark Strong as being two of the finest modern actors working in cinema at the moment. Go see this one.