Dramatizing the documentary

Rating: 7/10 (17 August 2018)

I am not one who, generally, likes to place any credence on the Hollywood excuse of dramatizing events to 'educate' the public. But, I am also one who is not inclined to watch Oliver Stone's genre of movies of any kind. This movie becomes an exception to that rule and only because of a chance encounter with it in a local library. Watching this movie compelled me to review the Snowden story. I tend to agree that this insistence that twisting the facts to make a movie more interesting is 'artistic license which often offends me. However, the results of this movie are that the people who are expected to diss it, for example, NSA overseers, do try to dismiss its value. I do intend, now, to watch Citizenfour, hoping that it will be truer to the truths behind the Snowden incident. What is disappointing is that this movie, with its astute references to the duty of every government employee, EVERYWHERE, to protect the truth and our freedoms over the motives of the entrenched elitists of our society, has NOT motivated many citizens on this planet to ask why the principles of the 1946 trials in Nuremberg are not legally protected in ANY OF our so-called 'democratic nations' on this planet. I am 66 years old, a former scientist who lost his job temporarily for daring to demand that the scientific truths I was responsible to be protected (in 1982). I paused from writing 'those books' which are my record as to why Snowden was indeed a principled man, no matter what the detractors say. Perhaps every viewer should watch this movie with the subtitles on and then ask why 'grand America', whose citizens seem to think like that 'fictional' NSA overseer, is NOT the protectorate of our freedoms and is, instead, silent to the very thing parts of this movie warn us about. In 2018, this movie, despite its shortcomings when it comes to dealing with the facts of the Snowden incident, should awaken ALL true 'democrats' to why a lawyer with constitutional training, Barack Obama, would summarily execute a distant murderer without trial (Osama bin Laden), justify this violation of international law and then become vindictive when the corruption of these partisan serving agencies is exposed by a whistleblower. This film is good at exposing the background dilemma which comes from making partisans, bound to their rich donors, above the law. Obama, this film reminds us, failed this planet and democracy so badly that we are left with a man like Trump, with a finger poised on dangerous weapons of mass destruction, 'for America'. It is sad that this movie seems to have failed us in opening up a debate which the subtitles do expose: when we suppress the freedoms that are compelled to allow criticism of those in positions of power, we do take this planet back to 1929. No matter what the lessons of Nuremberg are, which Oliver Stone appropriately draws into a movie which should compel greater citizen engagement in questioning all of this into 2018. Is it this movie which fails us or are we back to 1933 where journalists and others warned and the citizenry remained more interested in the theatre and movies? Don MacAlpine, Wolseley, Saskatchewan, Canada ... Live not in fear but in personal acknowledgement of the individual duty to protect the truth over self-serving interests of the powerfully positioned ...