It's now a matter of fact, not debate, that Vladimir Putin and the Russian state interfered with the US election of 2016 which saw Donald Trump become, quite easily, the worst President in American history. They didn't do it because they necessarily liked Trump (nobody likes Trump). They did it because they wanted to sow division and chaos in America.
It's safe to say they succeeded. Back in 2017, US news channels were full of talking heads, ranging across the political spectrum from Bill Maher to Tucker Carlson, arguing about what had happened. But the fact is, some people already knew for sure what had happened and for reasons some see as patriotic and some see as traitorous decided to leak details out to the kind of websites that like to pick up on the news that the mainstream media is scared to touch.
One of those people was Reality Winner (yes, that's her real name), a then 26 year old former US Air Force veteran and translator for the National Security Agency and in Tina Satter's new film, adapted from her own play, Reality we hear her story. Though, to be honest, not very much of it. There's A LOT of redaction.
Not only that but the whole thing is set, more or less, in real time over a couple of hours on June 3rd 2017. Reality (Sydney Sweeney) is approached outside her property, returning from a grocery run, by two FBI officers in the form of Justin C. Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and R. Wallace Taylor (Marchant Davis). Soon a third, unnamed, agent (Benny Elledge). Then more. Then more.
They have a warrant to search her house, search her car, and look at her phone. All of which they do. But, at first, they don't explain why. If you'd gone in to this film not knowing anything about the story of Reality Winner (and I knew very little) you'd be very confused as Garrick and Taylor ask Winner seemingly inane questions about her dog, about her cat, about her CrossFit training, and about her furniture.
Yet, and you need to be patient, slowly they get to the point. They believe she has mishandled classified documentation. Has she? If she has, will they be able to prove it? That's the entire gist of the film and it's all based on the actual FBI interrogation transcript. Something that, for the most part, is duller than you might like to imagine.
Yet the way Satter has handled the redaction is chilling. When we see printed documents it's the usual thing - large black boxes over the text - but when information is spoken that is still not officially out in the public sphere the words, and even the person saying them, just disappear into thin air.
Sweeney is great as Reality. Starting reasonably cool - which she puts down to her "resting bitch face" - but as things ramp up she starts to look sweaty and uncomfortable. But, if she leaked the documents or not it's not her who should be sweaty or uncomfortable. It's the people that knew, without any doubt, about the Russian interference in the election and did nothing about it. Even more so it's Donald Trump who only a month before the events in this film sacked the FBI director, James Comey, because he was investigating Russian interference.
Reality, as a film, shows only a small part of the American political system at work - but a very important part. If the US is the most powerful country on Earth, and it probably won't be for much longer for various reasons, it's terrifying that those who seek to protect it are put in prison and those that seek to destroy it are hugely rewarded. That's the reality but who's the winner?
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