Edward Snowden, Oliver Stone film reviewed

This video from the USA says about itself:

16 September 2016

Director Oliver Stone joined Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, for a conversation about his upcoming film Snowden. In a both informative and entertaining Forum, Stone explained the artistic process and difficulties of translating the controversial story of Edward Snowden into a film. While answering questions from the audience, Stone touched on his work in prior films, his motivation in telling political stories through cinema, and his views on the state of America’s government surveillance programs.

On 26 November 2011, I went to see the film Snowden by Oliver Stone.

The film starts with young Edward Snowden, from a conservative military family, indignant about the 9/11 attacks, joining the United States military Special Forces. Soon, he gets injured.

Snowden switches to the CIA; where his computer skills are welcome.

The CIA also welcomes that Snowden says his inspiration is right-wing author Ayn Rand. And that he says emphatically Yes to the question whether he considers the USA to be the greatest country in the world.

However, gradually Snowden changes. Partly influenced by his girlfriend, an opponent of George W Bush’s Iraq war. Partly by what Edward Snowden learns during his CIA work. That the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror‘ and the gigantic ‘intelligence’ bureaucracy linked to it are not really about fighting terrorism; but about confrontation with other nuclear armed countries like Russia and China. And about making sure money will keep going to the military-industrial complex. And about acquiring power over the private lives of hundreds of millions of people who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Snowden finds out that a backup program which he wrote for emergency cases if United States government communication would be in trouble, is abused for drone attacks in Pakistan, killing civilians, including children.

In the film, the character Corbin O’Brian is Snowden‘s CIA mentor. The name O’Brian is probably based on the character O’Brien in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Both O’Brien and O’Brian are characters who at first to protagonists Winston Smith (in 1984) respectively Edward Snowden seem to be good guys, but turn out to be bad guys.

In spite of his increasing doubts, Snowden stays in the ‘intelligence community’ because he hopes Obama’s election victory in 2008 will change things.

However, then, in 2013, top spying bureaucrat James Clapper lies to the US Congress that the NSA supposedly is not spying on hundreds of millions of United States citizens.

That settles it for Snowden. He decides to travel to Hong Kong, to tell what he knows to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald and independent film maker Laura Poitras.

The rest is history.

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