Reality (12A)
***
Reality reconstructs the FBI’s arrest of the first whistleblower of the Trump administration.
It’s not only based on a true story, but also a play, a very unpromising proposition. The USP is that it’s very closely based on the true story: it follows word-for-word the tapescript of the FBI’s interrogation.
The film touches on important topics, such as the degrading of the democratic process, how much the Intelligence services knew about Russian influence on the election, and what exactly we mean by reality, at least in terms of a film. For example, can it really be true that the protagonist is named Reality Winner?
After doing a grocery shop one June afternoon in 2017, Reality (Sweeney) arrives home in her car to find two FBI officers (Hamilton, Davis) waiting in the drive with a warrant to search her house. The film follows, not quite in real time, that search and the gently persuasive interrogation to determine whether she leaked a classified intelligence report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Satter’s film, adapted from her play, Is This A Room, keeps hammering home how real Reality is. Repeatedly we see a sound bar of the original government wav file of the investigation that tells us how far into the recording we are.
Satter also includes official redacted documents and extracts from Ms Winner’s social media accounts. But the more real it is, the more you question it. The fact that the performers stick to the letter, the ums and the ahs of the transcript (though it clearly skips sections) makes the viewer focus more intently on the other creative choices being made: the placement of the camera and the performers within the frame, the set design, the actors' line readings, their expressions.
For example, when the Feds asked if there is a room where they can talk, she says there is a disused room at the back of the house - which turns out to be the size of garage.
Above all, the film is a chilling expression of how it feels to be arrested, of being gently eased away from freedom and towards incarceration. Their approach is good cop, another good cop, but right from the start, as they bond over a love of dogs, you bristle at how she is being detached from her life, refused the opportunity to use her phone, take in her groceries, or look after her pets.
Directed by Tina Satter. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis. In cinemas June 2nd. Running time: 82 mins.
Go to http://half-man-half-critic.weebly.com/for a review of the BFI Blu-ray release of Renoir’s La Regle Du Jeu.
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