Winner, Reality Leigh

Subterms

    Latest story

    75 Shares149 Views

    ‘Winner’ Review: Not Like Other Girls

    by

    This dramedy starring Emilia Jones depicts the life and times of Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistle-blower.“Winner,” an oddly perky dramedy by the director Susanna Fogel (who wrote “Booksmart”), is loosely based on the life of Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor and Air Force linguist who was arrested in 2017 for leaking a top-secret report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. (She was released from prison in 2021.)But the eerie docudrama “Reality,” from last year, starring Sydney Sweeney as the titular polyglot, captured the tragedy of Winner’s case far more effectively than “Winner,” a sweeping biopic that presents her as something like an American Girl doll for the “I’m not like other girls” set.Extending from her adolescence through the aftermath of her arrest, “Winner” portrays the young woman as an endearing anomaly, with an anti-authoritarian streak shaped by her leftist father (Zach Galifianakis). Winner (Emilia Jones) is a pink-gun-toting animal lover and relentless freethinker who openly questions mainstream explanations for 9/11.The paradox of the real Reality Winner is that, despite her idiosyncratic views and her ability to speak the Pashto language, she was pretty normal. The film underscores this dynamic — she goes shopping with her mother (Connie Britton), moves in with her boyfriend (Danny Ramirez), powers through her 9 to 5 and eats dinner on the couch while watching CNN.This quirky girl-power comedy gives way to something darker as Winner becomes aware of U.S. government secrets, with the director drawing a connection between Winner’s political idealism and the public’s seemingly willful indifference toward corruption and human rights abuses. In this sense, the character plays to the archetype of the “social justice warrior” with some conservative touches. That’s the big problem with this strange film, which tries to humanize its protagonist but winds up making her feel plastic.WinnerRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Reality Winner’ Review: Caught in the Cross Hairs

      by

      Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary unpacks the circumstances surrounding its subject, but fails to crack her complexity.It is not always fruitful to compare a documentary about an event with a narrative film portraying that event. Yet “Reality Winner,” Sonia Kennebeck’s hazy nonfiction chronicle of Reality Winner — a National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced under the Espionage Act in 2018 when she was 26 — and this year’s film “Reality,” a searing dramatization of her interrogation, form a tidy double feature. The latter eschews context to paint an evocative real-time picture of a young woman in the F.B.I.’s cross hairs; the former painstakingly maps out the state of affairs surrounding Winner, only to see her personhood trickle away, like water cupped in one’s palms.Rotating among a handful of timelines, Kennebeck’s documentary spends the most time with Winner’s parents and sister as they push for Winner to receive a fair trial. These scenes are interspersed with blurred re-enactments (not unlike those starring Sydney Sweeney in “Reality”) and actual field-recording audio, as well as an interview with Winner, who orates directly into the camera à la Errol Morris’s Interrotron technique.One of the more troubling aspects of this complex case was The Intercept’s mishandling of the leaked document, and “Reality Winner” unpacks how The Intercept’s actions contributed to exposing Winner’s identity to the N.S.A. Indeed, the documentary’s most valuable testimonies come from other whistle-blowers (including Edward Snowden) who come across as extraordinarily well equipped to analyze the story’s knottier details.Despite this access, “Reality Winner” fails to decode its ideologically heterodox subject. The film is clear in showing how the media put her into boxes: a traitor, a terrorist, a progressive, an innocent, a lost cause. But who is Reality Winner? This documentary doesn’t dig deeper than her patently well-meaning exterior.Reality WinnerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More