There has been a documentary about Snowden before, "The Fourth Citizen". Snowden himself ventured out and told how Snowden, with the help of the media, exposed the Prism Gate incident. It also won the Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.
With such an excellent documentary about Snowden, how should the film be presented? After all, the purpose of the movie is not to restore the truth.
This should be a film with more meaning than content. The story begins in 2004. Snowden was still a patriotic and enthusiastic young man. The painful experience of the 9/11 incident made him know that the rise and fall of the country is the responsibility of everyone. In order to serve the motherland and the cause of anti-terrorism, he resolutely chose to join the army, but he accidentally injured his calf and had no choice but to retire.
But his patriotic heart was immortal, so he transformed from a soldier to a programmer and joined the CIA. With his excellent computer skills, his superiors appreciate him more and more, and the tasks he receives are more and more private. Until one day, he was tasked with investigating a Pakistani ambassador and officially came into contact with the "Prism" project.
Through this system, you can monitor and monitor the enemy's phone calls, voice, emails, social networks and even cameras, investigate the Pakistani ambassador to the bottom of the sky, and eventually make other people's homes ruined. As the work progressed, he became more and more suspicious of himself, more and more uneasy, and his fears expanded step by step. Later, he first discovered that the security system he developed had been transformed into a killing machine for drones. As long as terrorists acted rashly, they could operate from a distance and throw bombs at them.
Later, he discovered that anti-terrorism was just a pretext, and that the real targets of surveillance were actually American citizens, which undoubtedly ran counter to the American ideology of "freedom of speech" and "human rights first."
Snowden's quest for self-development found organizations monitoring the privacy of large numbers of citizens. But Snowden himself did not have a strong sense of resistance to such government actions at first, and he even wanted to use this layer of search system to serve himself. Although it ended up because of disagreement with the concept of superiors. But I have to admit that Snowden himself found a way to realize his self-worth in this unpleasant self-breakthrough. Despite the intense discomfort with private prying eyes and several departures in between, he has continued to do this type of work and has achieved some success in the field.
His mental pressure comes from the heavy data processing volume of the data analysis and monitoring itself, and the deviation from his expectations for the job; as well as the NSA's unjust monitoring of people's privacy under the guise of national interests, so that he - a People who are full of justice ideals have doubts. The limitations of his career development conflicted with his personal cognition, which not only affected his physical function but also shook his ideology. Leaping the ranks and provoking authority made him prematurely become the monitoring target of the organization, which eventually forced him into a dead end.
Under such repeated blows, Snowden became increasingly sluggish, and finally, he decided to expose the behavior of the US government. He used a Rubik's cube to kidnap all the core secrets from headquarters, evaded security checks, and made the documents public to reporters in Hong Kong.
It was director Oliver Stone who dared to film all this. Notoriously bold, he directed a series of biopics. "Kennedy Assassination", "Natural Born Killers", "Nixon"... In this film, Oliver Stone takes Snowden's revelations to the British Guardian as the main line, and in the process of telling the story little by little Insert the full story of Snowden's discovery of America's Prism program. It is true that Snowden will spend the rest of his life in fear, worrying about his life all day, and being on the move. But why did he give up a stable and prosperous life, put himself in danger, and leave the country? At the end of the film, Snowden himself said this as an Easter egg: The greatest freedom I have is that I no longer have to worry about what will happen tomorrow, I am happy with what I do today!
Director Oliver Stone has restored a flesh-and-blood Snowden for us. From the perspective of career and love, he has a comprehensive understanding of such a character, and restored the whole incident before and after, allowing us to see the whole process of what happened. Moreover, Joseph Levitt has carried out a high degree of restoration of the character's appearance and personality, fully showing the character's high inner tension and anxiety about what he is about to disclose, and mixed with the protection and caution of love, and strives to make the character become real. Therefore, the Snowden seen in the movie not only has a genius mind, but also bears the obsession with love, career and ideals in his heart. He originally treated his career with the heart of serving the country, but when After seeing all kinds of outrageous, hateful and disgusting truths, he changed his views. When he participated in all kinds of hidden projects, his inner conscience awakened him to the truth and freedom. Desire, and thus embarked on this path of disclosing state secrets. He originally had a superior salary and could live a prosperous life, but he abandoned this life and chose to betray his country and no longer bear the sins in his heart. This approach is brave and worthy of people's awe.
In order for the plot not to be as boring as a documentary, the director added a love story to the character, which made the movie more colorful and better understand the character's life. It also drags down the development of the characters. The relationship between the two people in the movie is in a very unnatural state. On the one hand, I want to express the simplicity and beauty of love, and on the other hand, I want to express that the relationship between the two people is distorted. In the unspeakable hiddenness that is difficult to tell, this makes love very tangled. The main purpose of the movie is to express the leak of the monitoring project. Obviously, the love scene did not dominate or affect the whole incident. It was Snowden who was handling the whole thing by himself. Love is only a branch of existence. There is hardly any connection between the two. If love gives the support behind the whole incident, laying out the love story will make the movie look more touching, but the love here has almost nothing to do with the incident, so it is impossible to lay out the important position of the heroine. In the process of confessing the secret, Snowden was completely involved. The heroine only knew after the whole incident was disclosed. In the name of protecting the heroine, she named the love as a kind of goodwill. Rather, it was an act of desperation. However, the director forcibly joined such a love story, which dilutes a lot of strong political atmosphere, and also makes the atmosphere of the film less serious and intense. The atmosphere reduces the sense of guilt and oppression in the hearts of the characters, more like a kind of encouragement and a kind of praise.
Snowden's experience is not very legendary, it can be said to be very ordinary, and it can be seen in the movie that he lived an ordinary life. He did not really come into contact with the secrets involved in the upper levels of the government. He was only involved in the development of a project and the improvement of technology. He appeared more as a computer engineer. The secrets he got were only detected data. . In other words, what he revealed is only a small part of the government's conspiracy plan, and what can be reflected is only the tip of the iceberg, but the reflection to people is huge, because it makes personal information no longer safe. Privacy is being arbitrarily snooped on, and the lie that advocates advocating personal freedom and protecting personal privacy is obvious. This makes people feel insecure and doubts about the government's behavior. The question of distrust and disbelief makes people resist the government. If you can't even protect your own privacy, what human rights are there? Word? So in people's minds, Snowden can be called a hero, because he gave us ordinary people a truth, that is, there is no privacy and no freedom. Wantonly infringing on our power in the name of protecting security, this is hegemony, this is robbery. Although we can't change the facts, but to know the truth, at least there is a little bit of mental preparation.
Sadly, after Snowden disclosed the entire surveillance plan, when seeking political asylum, only one or two countries publicly accepted his application, and more countries chose to refuse and escape, which reflects the fact that The essence of each country is the same, and what they do is almost the same. Even after the truth is disclosed, it is only the ordinary people who have been strongly reflected. For the national government, it is already a secret thing. This has to make people feel sad. The heroes we think have actually become the public enemies of the country. After being called the hero by us, we can only live as a traitor and never return to our hometown. Never seeing the faces of my relatives again, I have to say that the price is indeed a bit too high. Heroes are always lonely. It has been like this since ancient times. After every heroic feat, the price in return is a person's exile and loneliness. This is a helpless reality, and it is also something worth sighing. The only thing I can feel gratified It is the admiration from the people, and it is also worthy of the desire to pursue the truth in my heart. Snowden, an ordinary person has done a great thing, his name has become synonymous with this era, and it is also the focus of this era, but his life is a failure, he has lost a normal person The power to live, living in hiding every day, being placed under residential surveillance, and even facing the danger of life imprisonment. If you want to ask whether it is worth it, I don’t think ordinary people can understand it.
The liberal values promoted by the film clearly clashed with the U.S. government's surveillance program. But there are still people who dare to make it, no matter how rough it is, it is still released and released in more than a dozen countries around the world. Perhaps this is also a freedom.
Different from the documentary, from Snowden's own perspective, the film more emotionally presents a process of "human" change, rather than a simple description of the behavioral event of "Snowden's disclosure of the NSA Prism plan". To explore the film itself is to explore Snowden himself.
From the portrayal of the film, Snowden is a smart, restrained, heroic complex, uneasy about the status quo and dare to seek breakthroughs. From the very beginning of his entry into the NSA, his work process was full of unsatisfactory situations, and the relationship between his job position, personal development and superiors was in a very discordant state. His underappreciation of talent and the "overcorrection" in interpersonal communication are just like many "workplace novices" today, which are obviously very out of tune in the entire large work environment. If it is just a programmer in an ordinary company, he can choose to leave or change to a new working environment because of this sense of discomfort. But his agency is a senior government intelligence agency, and there is no possibility of changing the environment. If you don't adapt, you can only adapt, or you need to find ways to develop yourself within the organization.
Considering it from another angle, leaking the NSA's unjust monitoring of citizens' behavior is Snowden's death and future practice. Snowden's purpose of leaking classified NSA documents is not entirely out of public interest, but more to find a way out for himself. It was a bold gambling act, because the injustice of the NSA itself gave him a just statement for this purposeful leak.
In fact, he can be like many media informants, not showing his face and only talking about things. But he understands that he doesn't do anything to change his current work-life predicament. So he changed from passive to active, made a high-profile appearance in the media and exposed himself to the public eye, but he was safe. Because of the pressure of public opinion caused by the government's unjust behavior, there is no way for the government to secretly or easily take any action against him. And human rights issues such as personal privacy itself, in the United States, a country with relatively free speech and a relatively democratic political system, has enough influence on public opinion to send him to the altar. So, in a sense, his life has changed because of this, his crisis of being monitored has been lifted, and his heroic feelings and the value of life have been realized. He is no longer just a vassal of an institution, he has became a history.
Snowden's fame is due to the relatively democratic and free soil of the United States and the boost of the Internet data tide, as well as his own excellent technical ability and smart mind. In the "Snowden incident", the media played a direct role. Digital informatization is a double-edged sword. It can not only become a handle for the government to control public opinion and political mediation, but also become a favorable place for the rapid dissemination and fermentation of information. Contradiction of things promotes the development of things. This "personal behavior" of Snowden, to a certain extent, promoted democracy and conformed to the trend, so he became a "hero".
What is freedom, freedom, self-righteousness? Bernard Shaw said: Freedom means responsibility, which is why most people fear it. Maybe because freedom means responsibility. The degree of responsibility of the actor should be the same as the degree of freedom; unfortunately, there is something in people's nature that makes people want more freedom, but not more responsibility.
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