If only history found it as necessary to be dramatically compelling as movies

No argument.

Citizenfour is the most important documentary of the film year. That doesnt make it the best, though. That, it seems to me, is another subject altogether.

The raw facts of the matter put its significance entirely beyond dispute. Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras is one of those people tirelessly investigating homeland security procedures since 9/11.

She and reporter Glenn Greenwald started getting messages from a government employee who signed himself Citizenfour and who seemed to be promising the possibility of thunderous whistle-blowing about a subject of enormous interest to them both.

And how.

And that led to the very creation of this film, which documents how that world-rocking news story was born and knocked the world of American information off its axis. Poitras, then, was in on the very beginning of the story of Edward Snowden, who, through Glenn Greenwalds prize-winning reporting, revealed that the National Security Agency not only engages in domestic surveillance but has the technical capacity to do so on virtually a countrywide scale.

In effect, Snowden took part of the sci-fi premise of TVs Person of Interest and made it part of our contemporary reality.

What you watch for 114 minutes in Poitras well-made documentary is every early step of the Snowden story, from the first meeting with Greenwald in Hong Kong to his world odyssey fleeing from a U.S. government that doesnt take kindly to having its uglier secrets exposed.

Snowden blew one hell of a big whistle.

What he was doing, essentially, was revealing the U.S. constitutions Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights to have been transformed into a mere recommendation in a toothless Bill of Suggestions. At least one of our giant secret agencies the National Security Agency not only flouted that right but had the technology to virtually eradicate it.

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If only history found it as necessary to be dramatically compelling as movies