Snowden

In perhaps the film’s most powerful scene Snowden has a phone chat with his old boss/mentor, who appears on a wall-size screen. 

The boss’s face dwarfs all of Snowden.  That is, the state power overwhelms even the most brilliant individual. The image tacitly visualizes Orwell’s “Big Brother is Watching You.” 

Snowden stands between us and that face of corrupt power, in that shot as he does in the film’s overall warning about a federal government violating all principles and laws to spy unrestrained on all its citizens. 

The face reveals he knows about Snowden’s furtive conversations with his colleagues and even his unspoken private concerns, not just about the legality of the program but about his girlfriend Lindsey’s fidelity. So complete is the government’s invasion of the lovers’ life that the face can assure Snowden that Lindsey hasn’t betrayed him. its intended reassurance about her dissolves before the chilling revelation of the extent of the government’s spying.

      A program designed to track possible terrorists has turned into an uncontrolled invasion of even its’ most trustworthy citizens’ most private lives. The face ends the chat with a friendly line now turned sinister: “I’ll be seeing you.”

A few curt lines carry the film’s gist. “Terrorism is just an excuse.” Americans want security more than freedom. The full-screen images of computer programming represent a world that has lost humanity and traditional logic, that prefers the abstractions of logarithms and total power over its citizens over democracy. 

Of course the current election figures in too. Trump is cited twice but looms implicitly in the threat of an elected tyrant who would exploit the total surveillance to consolidate his personal power. Hillary is heard twice condemning Snowden’s crime. 

That he committed a crime is undeniable. Where Obama’s government shows its unfortunate (lack of) character is in refusing to consider his action as a whistle-blowing — that is, a crime that serves the public good — and insists on charging him with treason, which precludes an open, fair trial. 

For once Oliver Stone’s material is so compelling he doesn’t have to juice it up with inventions and distortions. If he invented the Rubrik Cube ploy it’s still an excellent metaphor for the gaming going on in the intelligence world — like the spying, a small game opens out into a mammoth one — and Snowden’s particular genius. 
     Stone clearly intends to valourize Snowden. What he deliberately frames out of his discussion is his possible endangering of individual agents’ and citizens’ lives by his sweeping revelations.