by Nick Taylor
By far the most surprising nomination from this year’s Gotham nominees was the lone nomination for Reality in the Best Feature category. Not the most obscure film cited, not in any way a quality assessment, not even an anomaly for the Gothams. Hell, The Rider won Best Feature in 2018 with no other nominations to its name (if we don’t count their 20-film Audience Award lineup). But who saw Reality coming, after a positive but wholly unremarkable critical response when it premiered in the US all the way back in May? Who had this on their bingo card, and could they share their guess on this week’s lottery numbers with me?
I’ll be spending November giving full reviews to some Gotham nominees that have yet to receive full coverage on The Film Experience. This was not the first title I watched, but the sheer mystification of its appearance gave it a tantalizing aura. And now that I’ve seen it for myself, my mystification at its Best Feature nomination only grows...
Reality, adapted by Tina Satter from her own stage play Is This A Room, follows a very particular conceit. Rather than narrativizing the FBI search and unofficial interrogation of government agent Reality Winner for leaking classified documents to the press, Satter’s script is simply the entirety of the FBI transcripts from a tape recording of their conversations. There’s no cleaning up of stammers and tripped phrases in dialogue, no brushing over seemingly extraneous or unimportant interactions, just a dramatization of the whole tape. If you don’t know who Reality Winner is going into the film, you’ll learn that she leaked classified information on Russian interference in the 2016 US election to the press, culminating in her arrest and record-setting imprisonment of five years for unauthorized release of government information. Or rather, the movie will tell you about these events, and gesture to why, but I’m not sure how much we actually learn about Reality Winner and her motivations.
Reality is at its best in its first third, in the preliminary table-setting before the interrogation begins. It’s all shockingly mundane. Reality (Sydney Sweeney) pulls into her driveway with her groceries, and before she can even get out of her car two FBI agents (Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis) have popped up with a warrant to search her property in connection to leaked government files. The “files” thing doesn’t get brought up again for almost half an hour. Instead, it’s a series of utterly normal interactions made painfully clammy, as Reality’s affable, filling-the-space-anxious chatter clashes with the unimaginable power underneath the agent’s chumminess. There’s such an insane imbalance of knowledge and might to the two parties, yet it’s fascinating how jumpy the agents are when Reality dashes to make sure her cat hasn’t run out the open front door, or when they physically block her as she reaches for her cell phone to demonstrate how to unlock it. Even if you don’t know what’s coming, it’s haunting to see her ask the agents to be careful with her phone so that she can access her yoga playlist, because she has a class to teach tomorrow and she doesn’t want to lose it.
Satter’s photography and editing strategies adhere to mundane formal registers, moving at a disarmingly quiet pace to mimic the real-time unfolding of events. Reality’s filmmaking strategies reflect its thematic concerns, toeing a fine line between offhanded camera and pacing choices while dramatizing Reality’s mounting anxiety. The score, however, is unbelievably obtrusive and almost indiscriminately used. Music seeps into conversations which have no reason to feel so threatening, overwhelming the ambiguities in the direction and performances in favor of just blaring noise. Properly tense sequences are sunk and made generic by the wholly anonymous yet overbearing score.
On top of all of this, Reality frequently cuts away to photographs of the real Reality Winner, to a document typing up the transcripts and an audio file fluctuating with the voices, constantly underlining its own devices and the woman whose fate this is dramatizing. It’s a frustrating choice, made even odder because Satter makes no artistic claims on Winner’s interiority. Sydney makes a solid go of embodying the bland, dissatisfied, fundamentally decent young woman Satter presents, and she cracks quite well as the pressure from the FBI men becomes even more overwhelming, but we’re so completely boxed from her headspace it’s honestly unclear if she’s confessing to her crimes or just a loyal government agent saying yes to authority figures who have labeled her a criminal in the hopes of leniency.
I can understand why Winner shouldn’t radiate a guilty conscience from the outset, but the audience is robbed from a deeper political or ethical grasp of her actions, regardless of whether we agree with her. Hamilton’s ruffled paternalism and Davis’s buddy-buddy routine walk their own tightropes, and they prove to be more consistent and internally legible characterizations, personalizing men who might have been empty, symbolic suits. The dynamic between these three characters, and the indelible mismanagement of power and priorities their presence represents, is all the more noteworthy as a political statement for not being heavily underlined.
As the film goes on, Satter starts experimenting with her real-time conceit in ways that can either read as a new director playing with filmmaking grammars or an inexperienced artist trying to rebel against the confines of her own gimmicks. Paul Yee’s cinematography takes on pink shades or indulges in intense close-ups apropos of nothing. Slo-mo becomes crucial to one scene and never returned to. Quick flashbacks of Winner punctuate her interrogation, as if we really need to see her sitting forlornly at her desk or hiding away forms. News discussions of Reality’s actions are spliced throughout her confession, and take up a solid portion of the last ten minutes. More interesting if literalizing choices like the handling of redacted information or the final shot of Winner being put in a police car are swallowed up as part of the film’s grab-bag of empty flourishes.
Reality’s failures are strange, distended choices for what should be a fairly straightforward thriller, though they at least indicate a more ambitious object than I was afraid we’d get. The most interesting retelling of Winner’s story absolutely encompasses more than this incident, yet the commitment to the weird nuances of its real-to-life dialogue gives it unique textures. If the Gothams had to nominate Reality anywhere, which I still don’t think they did, it makes sense to recognize it as a film, rather than as an acting showcase or directorial breakthrough. It’s a very odd duck, certainly the film I’d rank fifth of the five Best Feature nominees, but it evinces an unexpectedly compelling tension in its best moments. All in all, I’m glad I saw it.
Reality is currently streaming through subscriptions on Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO Max, and is available to rent on most major platforms.
