Snow­den

Oliv­er Stone is a stone cold leg­end. A major league pal­adin. A leg­endary gal­lant. A heavy, heavy dude who has done more than enough in his career to gain admit­tance to Val­hal­la, or what­ev­er oth­er bull­shit macho hunt­ing grounds he so desires. But even the great­est war­riors slow and weak­en with age, and it’s fair to say that the Oliv­er Stone that direct­ed Snow­den is not the same blood­thirsty psy­chotrop­ic icon­o­clast who gave us Wall Street or JFK.

Stone’s films used to be cul­ture-lev­el hur­ri­canes. Pla­toon all-but invent­ed the entire Viet­nam-via-Motown genre. An entire cos­mos of Kennedy assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed films, doc­u­men­taries and books spun into life after JFK. The Doors exhumed Jim Morrison’s hun­gover corpse and foist­ed it onto a whole new gen­er­a­tion of ​“Baude­lairi­an seek­ers” (stu­dents). These were news items and con­ver­sa­tion starters, but they were also great films informed by a blus­ter­ing intel­li­gence, a man­ic eye and a wal­lop­ing heart.

https://​www​.insta​gram​.com/​p​/​B​N​w​f​f​m​N​hd01/

Stone’s new film is about Edward Snow­den, the CIA agent who in 2013 leaked clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing secret NSA sur­veil­lance pro­grammes and is cur­rent­ly holed up some­where in Rus­sia. It feels like it was made as a chore. An unfor­tu­nate neces­si­ty that had to be got­ten out of the way in order for Stone to get onto chat shows and give inter­views where he can expound on the ero­sion of civ­il lib­er­ty and the inex­orable creep of gov­ern­ment agen­cies into our every­day lives.

As recent­ly as 2012, his sem­i­nal TV doc­u­men­tary series The Untold His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States proved that the brain, the imag­i­na­tion and the eye for con­struct­ing lay­ered, com­plex sto­ries in engag­ing, pen­e­tra­tive fash­ion was still there. Snow­den lacks any such fire, con­vic­tion or rigour. It could eas­i­ly have been made by a first-time film­mak­er or an erst­while job­bing documentarian.

And so we get a pure­ly head-on, top-down biog­ra­phy of Snow­den that asks no real ques­tions about the effects of his actions and instead rais­es him to the lev­el of uncon­di­tion­al saint­hood. Had this sto­ry been told in an inter­est­ing man­ner, or with some of Stone’s old vim, this might not have mat­tered so much. But denud­ed of the break­neck edit­ing, tem­po­ral jux­ta­po­si­tions and gnaw­ing doubt/​mania that enlivened real-life tales such as JFK and Nixon, we are left with thin gru­el indeed.

Joseph Gor­don-Levitt (fine) plays Snow­den as a con­cerned, con­ser­v­a­tive, slow­ly beguiled then abrupt­ly hor­ri­fied free­dom war­rior who is sick­ened by the per­ver­sions of pow­er his gov­ern­ment have engi­neered. His life is cushy, he is duti­ful, and yet he craves a splash of flashy 007 adven­ture as a field offi­cer. There’s your movie right there! Imag­ine what Mad, Bad Oliv­er Stone would have done with that one-line descrip­tion in his hey­day? Dis­trust, van­i­ty, pride, a mad­balls gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy, para­noia up the yin yang? All of these juicy angles are set aside in favour of a straight­for­ward, unques­tion­ing biopic of a dull man who very pub­licly quit his job.

One scene sums up the ener­gy and com­mit­ment to cin­e­ma that runs through the film. It fea­tures Snowden’s boss, played – for some rea­son – by Rhys Ifans, sit­ting in his home office when the phone rings, inform­ing him of his employee’s treach­ery. Ear­li­er in the film we are stren­u­ous­ly informed that Ifans’ char­ac­ter is fond of hunt­ing. And so it is that every­thing in his office, on his desk and on his walls is relat­ed to the killing of ani­mals (and some fish). Stuffed ducks, mount­ed guns, a lit­tle desk can­non and gaudi­ly framed hunt­ing por­traits abound. It is the set of a com­e­dy sketch about an arro­gant, monied pan­jan­drum brought low by the actions of a pip­squeak under­ling. And sit­ting among all the rich leather, tweed and enti­tle­ment? A slight­ly over­sized and com­plete­ly out of place black cof­fee mug bear­ing the words ​‘The Boss’.

Also stars Nico­las Cage.