The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Insufferable Height of Perpetual Narcissism

or 

Putting the "Meh" Back in "Meta"
 

I like "meta" in movies, when the Hollywood fantasy machine suddenly turns transparent, and something walks into frame that reminds you that "it's just a movie." The painted back-drop rolls out of frame to show the less-than-inspiring back-lot and makes the point that everything is calculated to make you believe in the situation portrayed and not that everything is "designed" to reinforce the falsehood. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" shouts Oz. Or the gaffer. Or the boom-operator. Or the perpetual green-screen. We want you to see what we want you to see. 

 

As Johnny Carson once joked "I can't believe 'Survivor' because I know that just off-camera there's a camera-grip eating a cruller."

 

But, it's a nice little joke to sometimes see the cruller. To see reality sneak in and wink. Like all the celebrity cameos in The Player. Like Julia Roberts (playing Tess Ocean in Oceans Twelve) trying to pretend to be movie-star Julia Roberts to pull off a scam (until Bruce Willis shows up and wonders why she can't remember their kids' play-dates).* Or when John Malkovich plays himself—or an actor named John Malkovich—in Being John Malkovich. Or, as in another Charlie Kaufman-penned screenplay, Adaptation., which is about the struggles of a screenplay-writer trying to write an "unfilmable" movie. Which starred Nicolas Cage.

Tom Gormicon's film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is one shallow dive into the madness of the "meta"-verse while being a love-letter to the star appeal of Nicolas Cage, its star. The film is plastered and puttied with references and clips of past Cage films and roles as it builds up the character of Nick Cage—not Nicolas, notice—an actor of many iconic roles, beloved by a fan-base, but struggling with finding parts to pay off his massive debts, stemming from a recent (fictional, mind you) divorce.**

The problem is that "Nick"—fictional Nick—is an actor of intense sensibilities who has a tendency to go "all in" in his roles and that can be discouraging to directors who are looking for stable and not mercurial. Nick is a star ("of course, I don't have to do a 'read'") but hovering below the A-list ("Of COURSE, I'll do a 'read'!"), who has had a good run but now is in the doldrums of his career, discouraged by all the film-makers wanting "to go another direction." For a self-involved narcissist like Nick, this is a situation he cannot process and he endlessly obsesses over the unfathomable consideration that he might not be in demand. In another Cage-career reference, he debates with an Adaption.-like twin of his former self, Nicky (Nicolas Kim Coppola, Cage's birth name), who has all the insufferable grand-standing of...young Nicolas Cage. Nicky wants Nick to remember that he's not an actor, he's a *STAR* and the id/ego clashes between the two are the best parts of the movie (and though my view of the film is marginal, kudo's to real-life actor Nicolas Cage for being so brutally satiric in doing a brilliant imitation of himself!)

With a sizable hotel bill mounting up and no prospects, he decides to take an offer from his agent, Richard Fink (Neil Patrick Harris) to appear at a millionaire's birthday party for a sizable fee, despite his artistic ambivalence to the idea ("I'm not a trained seal!"). The millionaire is Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal, at his puppy-dog best), who has made his fortune in olive oil (sounds familiar...), but under surveillance by the CIA in the form of agents Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz who suspect Javi of being a drug kingpin and the mastermind behind the kidnapping of a local politician's daughter.

Javi is, in fact, a massive fan of Cage's—maybe more so than Cage, himself) and, after some initial truculence on the actor's part, they bond over movies ("Paddington 2—it made me want to be a better man"), their mutual love for Nick Cage, and the possibility to collaborate on a screenplay. But, soon, Nick is in conflict as he's approached by the CIA agents to help their kidnapping investigation by being their inside man at Javi's compound, a task that he's thoroughly incapable of handling. No amount of "nouveau shamanic" acting can prepare him for "spy-craft, subterfuge, what-have-you."

The first blush of the movie and its premise is enjoyable, sometimes even brave, but pretty soon the movie is too meta for it's own good—especially when it starts to follow the two main characters' screenplay breakdown of "character driven opening—typical Hollywood blockbuster—we need to clear our heads and work on the third act." Boy-Howdy! That third act consists of a deliberately (but not amusingly) clumsy action chase that culminates in Cage suddenly proving competent—at gun-point—even while suffering from a vicious knife wound in his leg. What starts out as a mildly interesting little satire of narcissism and fan adulation finally succumbs to a by-the-numbers plot that would only energize a rom-com...or the vehicle for a flavor of the month comedic actor graduating from television.

Oh, the potential was there. And every once in a while there's a glimmer that either the writers or the director were waking up to the idea that this could lead up to something interesting...but the movie finally succumbs to formula and wasted potential, like an actor "settling" for a project, finally showing that it doesn't even have the courage to have anything less than an "everybody's happy" ending. Paddington 2 took more chances. You think massive talent has unbearable weight, consider that there's no heavier burden than a great potential.

One has to review the movie that's there, though, not its possibilities or its potential, so leave any worthless suggestions in the "might've been" section of the blog (there isn't one). But, one story intrigues me—that Nicolas Cage (the real one) liked the script but kept turning it down, and once he agreed, really wanted to play the "Javi" part.

 

Another reason that Nicolas Cage should keep working.

* On television, two of the best "meta" shows were "It's Gary Shandling Show" where Gary Shandling played himself in a sit-com or the blisteringly satirical high-wire act of "The Colbert Report" where Stephen Colbert played a windy blow-hard news reporter named Stephen Colbert.

 

 ** Cage in real life is in his fifth marriage. The ex-wife he's talking about in the movie is a fictional make-up artist he met while making Captain Corelli's Madolin, which is a real movie Cage made in 2001. Yeah, I know, it's confusing, but just keep in mind that the real-life Nicolas Cage is playing a fictional actor named Nick Cage, who looks, sounds and acts like Nicolas Cage and starred in all of Nicolas Cage's films. Got it?

Knowing

Knowing (Alex Proyas, 2009) The director's last film was the "in-name-only" bastardization of Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot," with its rule-breaking chrome figure-models that couldn't take apart a car convincingly. The movie benefited from Proyas' dark imagery and sense of imagination, but in the end it was another sci-fi film that finished with a fist-fight among the art direction. How....uh, "retro." The best thing about it was it gives somebody another chance to do Asimov right.

One walks in to Knowing, with the same kind of dread—another apocalypse movie, oh joy—only to come away impressed. More than that, you come away thinking thoughts that maybe Proyas knows science fiction better than most film-makers today, because Knowing does what really good science fiction does—show us an aspect of "now" that we don't consider and "us" that we finally recognize.

Forget the details, it's all hooey. They're just levels of Hell in Proyas' "Inferno," a means for John Koestler, college professor (Nicolas Cage) to drop the "Doubting Thomas" act, and "find religion." He's a man of science, after all, and doesn't believe in pre-determination...unless, of course, he unlocks, scientifically, the battle plan himself. Then, he believes, Lawd A'mighty.

But, once he reaches his cross-roads (and Proyas points it out with all the subtlety of a pick-up truck) that's when the certainty arrives and the movie reveals itself to be something different: a metaphor for Death.

And that's where the title comes in: we go through out lives sure of our mortality, and aware of the clock ticking in our chest, but we ignore it—we don't face it. It's penciled into the Day-Planner like that trip to France, but we never firm it up, we just delay it a day at a time. Some day, not today. Manana. There's no "drop-dead" deadline.

Until there is. And then, you have to face it and walk the Kubler-Ross steps, knowing (knowing) time's a-wastin.' And the priorities and everyday details knock over like those endless arrangements of dominoes, revealing what needs to be done right here, right now. You can rant, you can rave, you can find God (Hint: He's always the last place you look), you can put your affairs in order, have your last meal and cigarette and say your good-byes at the door. That's just all delaying the inevitable.

But the first thing is, it's all out of your hands.

This isn't about "you." It's about what "you" leave.

And that's what knowing (and "knowledge" is what the word "science" means) and Knowing is all about. There's a reason Roger Ebert was the one critic in the country who didn't just dismiss this movie. He's been to the cross-roads. He's on the other side, waving and smiling at us.

And laughing.

That's the thing about smarter people. They're so "elitist."

Adaptation.

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002) I love Charlie Kaufman's writing. It reminds me of the old "Twilight Zone" series...but with depth*—but he's more of the Charles Beaumont style of TZ story-telling than Serling's or Richard Matheson's or Earl Hamner Jr.'s. Leaps are made every few minutes beyond the central conceit, and comes to a truly disconcerting kernel of truth at the end, which makes whatever frustrations made during the course of the film worth it. Being John Malkovich is a charming deconstruction of personality and wish-fulfillment, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a jaded cynic's validation of love, and its intrinsic ability to be more than merely a process of instincts, chemistry and firing synapses. What's not to love?

But Adaptation. is another animal. It's "Charlie Kaufman in crisis," and a bit of a cheat, while also being an ingenious way to solve a problem—that is, writing a screenplay for a book that is, basically, un-filmable. Given the opportunity (and contract) to write a treatment based on Susan Orlean's best-selling book "The Orchid Thief,"** Kaufman readily accepted the job, being attracted to the odd obsessive themes of the book, and found himself unable to translate it into a film-story.

So—he thought outside of the box and the story itself—he wrote about his difficulties translating it into a film-story! The book's subject, John Laroche, the poacher who was seeking the "Ghost Orchid" in the Florida Everglades was a real person who was determined to find the rare flower to clone it and sell it. The screenplay's subject is about Charles Kaufman, screenwriter, who's trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book, "The Orchid Thief," and wrestling with its themes and his own inability to create the screenplay.

Impeding his process is his twin, simpler brother Donald (both played by Nicolas Cage), who's decided he's also going to write screenplays, none of which Charlie likes. Susan Orlean figures in it (played by Meryl Streep), as does Laroche—he's the bespectacled fellow pictured to the right, not Chris Cooper's snaggle-toothed (though Oscar-winning) portrayal (pictured above)—but they're fictionalized versions of the real people, adapted to fit a more commercial film. Laroche is using the orchids to make a drug and sell it, hooks Orlean, and she begins a needy affair with him and, fueled by her addiction, becomes as obsessed with the Orchid Thief as much as he's obsessed with the orchids. Is any of that true? No. Are the people real? Yes. The website, Chasing the Frog.com had done a fairly succinct job of separating the fact from fiction here. Yes, these people do exist, as does screen-lecturer Robert McKee,*** but they're fictionalized versions of the real people. Can Kaufman get away with doing that? Yes, he obviously did, but they had to get permission from the real-life counterparts to do so (just as Jonez had to get permission from John Malkovich for Kaufman's Being John Malkovich or that would have been a moot project).

Look up the word "Adaptation" in the dictionary. "Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment." There couldn't be a better explanation of the screen treatment of Adaptation. Kaufman couldn't, as they say in the trades, "crack it," so he changed the structure of the scenario...transplanted it, if you will...to make it work as a movie—especially a movie in the current environment of movie-making. And he made the debate between what he wanted to do and what he had to do part of the story in the form of the arguing screenwriting twins, Charles and Donald Kaufman.

Any writer of success must at some point deal with "the Other." The other writer, whose ideas are dismissed and shelved for work accomplished. Steven King did an experiment once to see if his writing would be as successful in other genres as opposed to the "scary fiction" writer, Steven King. So he created a psuedonym, Richard Bachman, much to the consternation of his publisher. Bachman sold well, but King had to deal with the success of his dopple-scrivener after several books were published. Ultimately, it inspired the concept of his novel "The Dark Half."

Noms de plume are as old as Bashō (and I'd bet cave paintings had false signatures, as well), and Adaptation. is credited to both Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Donald Kaufman is the first completely fictional person to be nominated for an Academy Award (at least not as a nom de plume). Donald also serves as a way for Charles to have conflict while doing something solitary—writing. For all the preciousness of the conceit, it still manages to work in a weirdly clear way, and it provides the means of this exchange, which re-defines the whole picture and sums it up: Donald and Charlie are talking about a time in school when Donald approached a girl he had a crush on, and when his back was turned, she and her gaggle of "Heathers" made fun of him.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

You are what you love. Not what loves you. For that little gem of a thought—multi-faceted, flawless and fundamental—I have enormous respect for Adaptation. for all its problems.

Oh, one more thing: My first impression of Adaptation. was to recall a punch-line from an ancient Warner Brothers cartoon (actually a couple of them, one of them being "Show Biz Bugs," another "Curtain Razor")—but because of what transpires (and the fear that kids would duplicate it) it's not much in circulation anymore. In it, the indefatigably fame-seeking Daffy Duck is auditioning for stage-time for his act. Each one fails miserably and he's rejected. "Next!" Finally, he shows up in a devil's costume. He eats gunpowder. He drinks gasoline and nitro-glycerine. Then...dramatically, he swallows a lit match. BOOM! There's a huge explosion. "That's incredible!" cries the ecstatic agent. "I can book you immediately!" "Yeah yeah," says the ghost of Daffy, drifting heavenward. "But I can only do it once!"****

The fictional Charles Kaufman—or is it Donald? (Nicolas Cage)
—on-set with the non-fictional Susan Orlean.

For Ned', who asked...on July 9th, 2008

* There are others who take that switcheroo-based style of writing, including M. Night Shamyalan, and Alejandro Amenábar.

**You can read the original Laroche article here, at Orlean's web-site.

***McKee suggested Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter) to play him in the movie. Good suggestion, actually.

**** Because the bit is dangerous, violent...and, if improbable, actionable, it has, over the years, been censored, as has been catalogued by this YouTuber.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The Ultimate Spectacular Amazing Spider-Man
or
"Aw, Did That Feel Like a Cartoon?"

Back in "the day", before the super-hero glut in multi-plexes, James Cameron was trying to untangle the web-like rights to the Spider-Man character to make the first Spider-Man movie. Rumors were that it was going to be prohibitively expensive as well, as Cameron's story involved multiple dimensions—that was a rumor, but in those pre-Titanic days, everything associated with Cameron was considered prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that he could squeeze every last drop of screen quality out of his budgets just by clever movie-making legerdemain. It also seemed like a big leap in concept for that first introductory "Spidey" movie—audiences needed to be able to "buy" into things like radioactive spiders, web-shooters, urban web-slinging, sticking to walls, and fooling your old "biddy" aunt that you were at the library when you came home bruised after fighting a giant lizard before we got into any story with any real dimension—or many of them. With great powers comes great amounts of time justifying them to an audience that still doesn't quite believe a man can fly.

But, if you're going to crank out comics monthly (or bi-weekly), you have to come up with something besides a story about a villain that dresses up like an aardvark for the hero to fight, so writers—being writers—came up with the "multiple earths" theory where you could have stories with a "what if?" hook. DC started it with their "Flash of Two Worlds" story in a 1961 issue of The Flash comic book, where that book's hero visited the alternate Earth of "The Flash" from the 1940's—although Wikipedia makes a case for it starting in a 1953 issue of "Wonder Woman." Marvel started their multiple Universes with 1984's "Captain Britain" series, but, recently, the various media in which superheroes appear have dabbled with "Alternate Earth" story-lines, the most recent (and I'd argue at first viewing) and among the best of any super-hero films is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with a story written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman and energetically directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and and Rothman.

Meet Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), a high school student living in New York. Dad (Bryan Tyree Henry) is with the NYPD, and his Mom (Luna Lauren Velez) is a nurse. He attends Brooklyn Visions Academy, a charter school, although he'd rather be at Brooklyn Middle with his pals. It's just Miles is brilliant—he can't even fail a test to get kicked out. Miles is more of an artist than academic, and despite the pressure from his folks, he'd rather be spending time with his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), although his father disapproves.

His Dad also disapproves of Spider-Man (voiced by Chris Pine), who starts out the movie with a "Okay, let's do this again" narration that introduces you to who Spider-Man is—he will remind you a lot of previous "Spider-Men" in other Spider-Man movies, at least THIS Universe's Spider-Man movies—talking himself up and ending with "The only thing standing between this city and oblivion is the one and only Spider-Man."

A bit premature, that. After another spat with Dad about having to go to BVU, Miles goes to visit his Uncle Aaron, who encourages his graffiti-art and takes him to the subway, where Miles gets to practice painting the wall of a blocked-off section. It is here where Miles gets bitten by a radioactive spider, because, hey, it's happened before, and he finds that things get a bit sticky and has him climbing the walls...quite literally. That's something that doesn't happen with puberty, and it causes all sorts of mishaps that he can't explain and does not understand.

Standard stuff, right? At least standard for a Spider-Man movie. But, this is where things get good. Very good. Because with great powers come some great graphics and some very imaginative film-making. The directors go full-tilt comic book with narrative boxes, emoti-squiggles, dramatic freeze-frames, and some onomatopoetic effects that seamlessly interact with the action going on, and become a part of the landscape of its hero's experiences. At times, it is positively thrilling to watch Spider-Verse unfold, so creative are the choices to enhance it made, without sacrificing the momentum of the film or the story. Nobody's tried this since Ang Lee made his Hulk movie, but this is far more successful in every way.

At the same time, look at the picture of Miles looking at the spider that irradiated him. Click on it. Look at it large and look at the light. It's made of dots, not unlike how the old comic-books used to make graded colors out of the primaries. It's subtle, but noticeable and they do that throughout the movie, creating an image that isn't pure white light, but has an ethereal glow to it. It's done quite a bit in the movie, but never to the point where it's really distracting, but gives it "an edge" being in a movie, although it elicited a nostalgic sense of memory for this old comics reader.

One more technical thing which I loved (then I promise I'll get back to the movie): the three directors do a wonderful thing with focus and distance—they take it slightly off-focus, by merely shifting color gradients a bit, like an old-time comics printing error, while they keep the area of intended attention sharp. This was particularly effective in 3-D (which, for once, I recommend) where it looks a bit like the stereoscopic errors that plagued the close perspective images in the early versions of the latest generation of three dimension-pushing films. This is a great choice and one more cleverly innovative way the directors create their comic-book world. By comparison, look at the difference between the shot above, and their photo-realistic city-scape below.

End of technical geek-out—

While strolling up the side of a building, he's noticed by Spider-Man—the established Spider-Man—who takes Miles under his web to learn the...webs. Unfortunately, on that night, Wilson Fisk—the New York gangster called "The Kingpin" (voiced by Liev Schreiber) is testing a new device that creates a trans-dimensional bridge because...well, that's a spoiler that's revealed in a lovely sequence based on the art-style of Bill Senkiewicz...but Fish doesn't care that it causes city-wide earthquakes and a "glitching" transformation of pieces of New York. He's a big, bad dude, after all, and he proves it by killing Spider-Man when he tries to stop the destruction.

New York mourns Peter Parker, the twenty-something who was Spider-Man, except that...he's blond! The Peter Parker "we" know has dark hair and we have that verified when he shows up on Miles' Earth, having been sucked out of his world due to Fisk's foolhardy experiments. THIS Parker—Peter B. Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson)—is also 20-something, not in the best of shape (Miles calls him the "brink old-joke hobo Spider-Man") and is going through an emotional upheaval after the collapse of his marriage to Mary Jane Watson (Zoë Kravitz). Despite that, he's the only "one-and-only" Spider-Man in town, and Miles looks to him to help him become the Spider-Man he wants to be. As Peter B. wants to get back to his own world, he agrees, especially since Miles has a doo-hickey needed to shut off the Fisk-machine—except that...he broke it. So the two make a trip to Fisk Tech-Labs to try and find a replacement, because, as Peter B says, "the best way to learn is intense, life-threatening pressure."

They also get help from that Earth's Aunt May (voiced by Lily Tomlin, bless her) and other dimensional Spidey's who show up at her door-step—because they all have an Aunt May. There's Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) from the dimension where Gwen Stacy becomes a Spider-person, Spider-Noir (Nicolas Cage) who comes from a gritty, black-and-white Universe, Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), who, with her robot spider-kick is an anime hero, and, finally, Spider-Ham (voiced by John Mulaney), the Spidey from a cartoon universe. The six web-slingers form a team to try and get back to their own worlds...and teach Miles that "with great abilities come great accountability" (or something like that) because it takes a village of Spider-people.

Sound complicated? Not really, certainly not the way the film-makers tell it. Entertaining? That, it CERTAINLY is. Turns out it takes SIX Spider-Men to change a franchise...for the better. Given the whole package, story, direction and animation imagination, one is confident in saying Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best of this particular hero's films—even better than the live-action Spider-Man 2—and certainly, animation aside, the best directed of the Spider-Man films (which never really managed to convey good Spider-Man action no matter how much they tried) even given its many changes of perspectives and often vertigo-inducing sequences.

Speaking of which, while I was watching the film, some of the more (shall we say?) "flashy" effects seemed to be extreme and given the pace of the film, a might strobe-like. There was a time when I wanted to end the review by saying that the only way you could not like the film would be if you had no interest in animation, visual presentation or prone to epileptic seizures. When I went to another theater the next day, there was a warning placard at the concession stand warning of those prone to epilepsy of such effects as they were displayed. There is some internet chatter about making an online petition. Duly noted. Take note. Some dimensions you don't want to fall into.

Still, I enjoyed the flashing lights. My admiration for the film has only grown since the day I saw it, and my distance from it has not dimmed my enthusiasm or admiration for this, one of the best presentations of the superhero genre, ever.

Heroes and Villains, Part 2: Snowden

"When one is young it seems so very easy to distinguish between right and wrong. But as one gets older it becomes more difficult, the villains and the heroes get all mixed up." 

 Rene Mathis, Quantum of Solace 

The wisdom of the mob plays tricks with reality. You see it a lot, especially as age gives you longevity and experience. You remember incidents that time glosses over in pertinent detail. On the other hand, the demands of the "24 hour news cycle" creates an urgency for happenstance when the "tube" needs to be filled, often with speculation and mis-information that gets refuted later with the clarity of time. Information and time yin and yang separating truth from fiction—but not everybody gets the message. And depending on when the hearing happens, people tend to hear something and believe it, even if it gets refuted. People believe what it is easier to believe...or merely what they want, never mind the facts.

Over the next couple of days, recent movies about individuals who are judged by single acts, and whether they are heroes or villains, depends on your point of view in the audience.

Epic Shelter
or
...a Very Frustrating Individual

It's always difficult to say that an Oliver Stone film is "based on a true story." Every subject he makes a film about goes through "The Stone Filter," injecting his views, his "Daddy issues," his prejudices, whether they're called for or not. It's tough to separate the man from his movies, like Howard Hawks or John Ford (but even those film veterans changed over time). Stone is stuck in his mind-set and screenplay-template, and he will tailor the facts to meet his own expectations. Film-makers do this all the time, compressing characters into one, juggling time, and even inventing incidents and people to help drive home a dramatic point. But Stone is egregious about it and unapologetic. He is an auteur, and so, rather than serve the story or the material, he serves himself. And so, his films, be they fiction or non-fiction, biography or fantasy, whatever genre they're in, feel much the same.

Snowden, his latest, follows the same pattern,* showing the transformation of the young tech-savvy, politically-conservative** veteran (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to eventual whistle-blower, after serving time in the military to timing servers in the CIA, working on intricate hacking scenarios and data collection, but running afoul of inter-agency politics and becoming paranoid and disenchanted with the breadth and depth of intelligence gathering and interpretation.

Stone starts the film in Tokyo, where Snowden has flown from his job in Hawaii after smuggling NSA files using a rigged Rubick's cube (wonder how high that is on the TSA lists these days). Snowden is in limbo. He's taken files, but that activity has not yet been discovered, and that won't happen until the contents have been published. To accomplish this, he needs documentation and verification. He meets documentary film-maker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), who will eventually make the film Citizenfour and Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto). Once they're informed, it's a race against time. He'll be tracked, investigated and hunted. There will be no room for error.

In the down-time waiting for confirmations before transmitting the files, he goes into his back-story negotiating his military service, discharge for injuries, his entree into the CIA. Why any of this back-story involves meeting his eventual girlfriend (Shailene Woodley), it's tough to say, but I'm sure it serves some journalistic function and might demonstrate some level of sacrifice for going into hiding. 

During the course of the story, we meet some influences: Professor Hank Forrester (Nicolas Cage), who, himself, has worked in the intelligence community and found the experience dispiriting and demoralizing. At the CIA, he meets another mentor, Corbin O'Brian  (Rhys Ifans, a wonderfully creepy performance without much effort), who, impressed with Snowden's skills, champions his course through intelligence. For Stone's by-the-book story-telling, the protagonist must choose between two opposed father-figures, each serving a role as angel or devil on the protagonist's shoulders. Lately, Stone has gotten subtler in his dependence on the "Daddy" trope—he even managed to undersell the huge one in W. But, in his early films, like Platoon and Wall Street, those conflicts form the very basis of the films. In such scenario's, you need to have the conflicting world-views in order for the guy in the middle to reach his own path, and Stone returns to the formula to tell Snowden's story. It isn't enough that he's frightened by the cavalier way his fellow intel-minders collect data. Any back-door, any un-shaded camera, anything can give them access into people's private lives. Snowden goes from disenchanted to paranoid, beginning to cover his laptop's camera aperture with tape, questioning motivations for the details, while also beginning to question "The Big Picture."

The special effects crew get their cameo's.

Pretty soon, he begins to magically morph with Stone's world-view: the intel-gathering is not, as it's portrayed, "to fight the terrorists," it's to protect "the Military-Industrial Complex," Stone's multi-tentacled monster (not that he's wrong, particularly, it's just that everything in his "non-fiction" films usually circle around to involving the preservation of the MIC as a conspiracy and underlying motivation for almost everything). He does pound on it as much as he has previously, but the man can't make a movie without a mention of it.

Back in Tokyo, the trio are joined by The Guardian's Ewen McAskill (Tom Wilkinson) and the four send the data to The Guardian's offices, where the managing editor (Joely Richardson) is being ultra-careful in deciding to publish. Greenwald finally loses it under the pressure and threatens other avenues of dissemination, post-scripted with a mention of The Guardian's reluctance. They get assurance that it will be published at a certain time and plans are made to book Snowden out of the hotel and to the next "undisclosed location."

"My name's O'Brien...oh, sorry...it's spelled O'Brian....what year is this?"

Stone bounces back and forth in time-lines using casual conversation as a segue, some of which works, some of which is merely contrivance, and he hauls out some special effects to represent "Internet-land," probably for those who can't grasp the concept of connectivity—which might approach absolute zero. He touches on Snowden's health issues perfunctorily, dabbles with "the girlfriend" issue, but, mostly, it seems  the warring fathers aspect is what he's concentrating on, expanding the two characters' importance beyond what they would appear...for two characters that are actually fictional. Just what part of this movie are we supposed to believe? And if we're being led down the Stone path, it would be nice to believe in something. The Tokyo sequences recall Citizenfour and the flashbacks could all be fever-dream or epilepsy-haze, but we're not given any indication that it might be anything less than rock-solid reality. 

Dramatization

So...hero or villain? Stone provides no perspective other than his own. Oh, there's a moment of negativity, but it's mostly from topical higher-up's like Clinton and Trump ("...they used to execute people like this...")—in other words, no perspective. And one's opinions will be informed by whatever political leanings one might have—whether they see Snowden as a hero for exposing domestic surveillance among cell-carriers*** or a villain for showing how extensive the data collection techniques are (in which case you might think him a hero for having something to do with hacking the DNC). The choice is in ourselves...and, like most controversial figures, he is judged for that one act in a lifetime (in much the same way as the protagonist of Sully). 

Reality

* Stone was reportedly reluctant to take on another contemporary subject, wanting to make a film about Martin Luther King. He took the project on after the King movie fell behind and after meeting with Snowden in Moscow.

** Just HOW conservative Snowden is/was, Stone keeps a little nebulous. During his first date with his soon-to-be girlfriend, she makes a crack about the government under Bush, and Stone has him say "I just don't like people bashing our government." Okay. It fits the "Stone Filter" that Snowden have a hero's journey from one extreme to another, ala Born on the Fourth of July, or JFK, while keeping an idealism that fuels both ends of the spectrum. 

*** I've always loved Steven Colbert's analysis: "Of course, they're checking personal phone records looking for terrorists. If you've ever called Verizon Wireless for customer service, pretty soon you're GOING to become a terrorist!"