How much reality can you inject into a drama without making it boring, and how much drama can you inject into a reenactment of real events without making it laughably false? Tina Satter’s film Reality, now streaming on Max, addresses both those questions in a taut 82 minutes.
The movie is based on Satter’s Broadway play Is This a Room, which draws the entirety of its dialogue from the official transcript of the initial Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogation of Reality Winner.
A 25-year-old U.S. Air Force vet with a high security clearance, Winner was suspected of printing out a National Security Agency report on Russian hackers’ interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and mailing it to the Intercept. After the events shown in the film, she was sentenced to five years in prison under the Espionage Act — the longest federal sentence ever for unauthorized release of government information to the press.
The deal
On June 3, 2017, FBI Agents Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis) arrive at the home of Winner (Sydney Sweeney). They tell her they have a warrant to search for evidence of “possible mishandling of classified information.” She expresses surprise.
On the lawn, Winner and the agents discuss what they will find inside her modest rental home — her dog, her cat, her pink AR-15. Eventually, they move inside the house, into an unfurnished addition that Winner considers “creepy,” for the interrogation proper.
The agents reassure Winner that they don’t think she’s “a big bad master spy.” Garrick tells her he shares her political frustrations. Taylor says they’re only there to make sure she isn’t an “ongoing problem.” Step by artful step, they nudge her toward a full confession.
Will you like it?
Reality is a fascinating formal experiment — a historical chamber drama in which all the dialogue is factual and all the poetic license happens between the lines. Viewers’ reactions may vary depending on how much they already know about the case, because certain key information is redacted from the transcript. (Satter conveys those gaps with jarring visual and sonic glitches.) Not until the end of the film do we get a brief, documentary-style rundown of the facts through text and archival footage. At this point, Reality becomes more overtly sympathetic to Winner, citing a U.S. Senate report suggesting that her leak provided a public service.
For the bulk of the run time, however, there’s no editorializing except by Winner or the feds themselves. Reality is essentially a procedural, an informative record of how federal agents tease out a confession. But it’s also tinged with the absurd precisely because it is so “real.” Ironically, the mundaneness of the situation is what makes it intermittently bizarre — and fascinating.
We can assume the agents are trying to bond with Winner and put her at ease, the better to make her tell all. Still, no TV procedural writer is likely to concoct the sort of rambling small talk in which they engage with their suspect. Long stretches of dialogue are devoted to pets and exercise regimens. Winner chats about her cat’s fondness for carbs even after she’s confessed to stealing NSA secrets. Other moments verge on cringe comedy.
While the transcript is rich in non sequiturs — just like reality — the filmmaking and performances flesh it out into a compelling small-scale tragedy. We don’t need to know the political context to see that Winner is a driven young person struggling to turn her convictions into real-world action. She feels frustrated in her career as a crypto-linguist. She doesn’t apologize for living or vacationing on her own. She ingratiates herself to the agents using dry humor, yet she rarely smiles (in her own self-deprecating words, she has “resting bitch face”).
With skill and nuance, Sweeney shows us how even such a self-contained person can progress in a few hours from deadpan declarations of innocence to a flustered confession. Satter’s direction conveys the distortion of Winner’s interior world as the pressure mounts. Immediately after her confession, for instance, a snail on a window frame suddenly becomes an object of intense close-ups. In this visual context, her nervous chatter makes sense — it’s an anchor to normalcy.
When Winner acknowledges that her crime was a response to chronic feelings of anger and hopelessness, we feel for her. But it’s not a rah-rah partisan moment so much as a recognition that life is always tough for individuals who feel ground in the gears of institutions. Like most of us, Winner has both high-minded and petty motives: She wants to inform the public, and she’s pissed off that her employer plays Fox News all day in the office. From such daily frustrations is history built.
Reality demonstrates that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. And, when it’s filtered through an artist’s vision, it can be just as compelling.
If you like this, try…
I haven’t been able to find a streaming source for Sonia Kennebeck’s 2021 documentary United States vs. Reality Winner, which offers a broader view of the case, including interviews with Winner and her family. Until it’s available, try “This Is Reality — the Reality Winner Podcast.”
Citizenfour (2014; YouTube, Prime Video, Tubi, rentable): In the transcript, Winner assures the FBI agents that she’s no Edward Snowden. Laura Poitras’ documentary offers intimate access to perhaps the most famous whistleblower in recent memory.
Agents of Chaos (2020; Max): This two-part documentary from Oscar winner Alex Gibney delves into the subject of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2023.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
