“I wasn’t trying to be a Snowden or anything,” says Reality Winner (yes, that’s her actual name) in Reality. The real-life Winner, a translator working for a National Security Agency contractor, is by all accounts an ordinary all-American woman: she likes yoga, has two pets, and owns a pink AR-15. She was also given the longest prison sentence — five years and three months — ever imposed for the unauthorised release of government information. Director Tina Satter, adapting her play Is This A Room, makes a refined directorial debut depicting Winner’s initial arrest, striking a fine line between the ordinary and the surreal.
Beyond the lead character’s name, Reality works as a particularly apt title. The entire screenplay is plucked verbatim from the transcript of Winner’s apprehension by the FBI, operating as a near real-time observation of events. Brief cuts to the transcript itself show how every errant stutter, cough and piece of inconsequential background noise is recreated to the finest detail. But the film is more than just a straightforward docu-drama. When the dialogue arrives at redacted portions of the transcript, Winner disappears and the screen glitches in streaks of colour. It’s the one stylistic flourish in an otherwise austere film, but it’s effective in conveying that this re-enactment, like the words it’s pulled from, is manipulated truth.
Sydney Sweeney, whose Emmy-nominated work in Euphoria was attuned to that show’s maximalism, dials it down for her best performance yet.
The film is a slow-ticking time bomb, not culminating in a grand explosion, but the impending doom of the truth spilling out. That bubbling suspense feels all the more unsettling in the compromised comfort of Winner’s house, which is invaded by men poking and prodding her every belonging. She’s forced to move the interview to a back room, where the officers have her stand against its stained white walls. The dingy open space of the abandoned room becomes claustrophobic, reducing an ostensibly safe space to an alien prison.
Sydney Sweeney, whose Emmy-nominated work in Euphoria was attuned to that show’s maximalism, dials it down for her best performance yet. Reality masks her guilt behind nonchalance, but as the FBI agents chip away at her evasiveness and precarious half-truths, her almost imperceptible twitches tell all, captured in extreme close-up.
Eschewing the peril of true crime, Reality settles in the sheer mundanity of its characters, sprinkling in comedy in a way that never feels inorganic — such as a recurring aside involving Winner’s cat, who refuses to get out from under her bed. In-between leading questions, officers Taylor (Marchánt Davis) and Garrick (Josh Hamilton) attempt to diffuse the tension by falling into regular small talk. They amicably chat with Reality about her dog’s dislike of men and trade stories of Crossfit injuries. Are they just being polite, or are their faux niceties a tactic to coax a confession out from her? In either case, Reality is fascinating as an exploration of everyday humanity, and the film excels in portraying how the most banal of exchanges are also the most thrilling.