Citizenfour

I always found it odd that suddenly there was this relatively free electronic network that I could use to communicate with others, read the news, shop, bank, play games, book tickets, do practically anything I wanted to do, sitting at home, using my computer.

I understand next to nothing about how it was constructed yet eventually started using it so much that I found it was an integrated inextricable part of my life, an unprecedented development, I started to think we were living in the luckiest moment in human history, and still sometimes can't believe our good fortune, although reservations began to settle in a while back.

With most of my life up online, it began to occur to me that this information could be manipulated in the wrong hands, and used for some bizarre counterproductive purpose, the likes of which never really occurs to me, I don't see why that would happen, I do watch a lot of movies though, the possibility of which still subconsciously disturbs me, however, in the background, at times.

But I figured, whatevs, I live in North America.

I'm Canadian, we have rights, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guarantees that you can speak freely, discuss things rationally, irrationally, criticize things as you see fit, without having to worry about being watched or going to prison.

Freedom of movement, equal opportunity, public libraries, freedoms to gather, all of these things that we didn't have hundreds of years ago but have now because previous generations fought for and created them so that our lives could be somewhat more free.

Citizenfour chronicles how the American government has access to all kinds of private information shared between electronic devices and how it can illegally use that information to potentially imprison you for speaking freely about some kind of oppressive instance which at one time would have been the subject of a riveting public debate.

There's no escaping it.

I don't see how you can stop this.

Law enforcement officials are supposed to need warrants to search your private information.

It shouldn't be available to them 24/7 because some lunatics launched the 9/11 attacks.

But it seems like that was the reason why the internet was suddenly available for free for everyone, or at least part of the explanation, giving law enforcement agencies the power to bypass constitutional rights to privacy, on Obama's watch, so that they can access a fluid, hip, integrated police state, your entire life available to the authorities, shimmering in the ether, billowing in the cloud.

Snowden's account of what can be known about someone based upon their online footprint is astounding.

Movements predicted, potential conversations held at specific points, expected patterns of behaviour, etc., I got used to the potential for this a long time ago, figuring it was a possible hazard for anyone who writes about politics, but still wish it weren't so, not an easy thing to get used to.

Snowden risked everything to expose abuses of power by the American authorities which bypass constitutional rights to privacy so that everything Americans do can be monitored and scrutinized.

He didn't just suddenly make the information available online, but worked with reporters like Glenn Greenwald to slowly reveal the truth about the illegal activities that have been sanctioned for years.

He should be welcomed back to the United States as a champion of individual and collective rights and freedoms, and we shouldn't have to wait 30 years to see this happen.

A truly exceptional individual.

What an American.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Delicate operations requiring providential mnemonic triggers and creative conditional calculations present themselves to retired intelligence agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) as he attempts to identify a Russian spy. Having infiltrated the highest level of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), this spy is well positioned to discretely disseminate significant flourishes of information to his superiors in the Soviet Union. Tacit knowledge, social and institutional information management, and the threat of death play integral roles in Smiley's clandestinely profitable wagers. The stakes are high and the opposition fierce as he descends into the labyrinthine foundations of memory, availability, and time.

In the interests of precision.

Taking ordinary research and adorning it with a strict lethal sense of provocative immediacy, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tantalizes the inquisitive faculties while proceeding staggeringly from point A to point B in a laconic linear warp.

Like an indirect salute to editorial predilections.

Trying to unearth the hidden adhesive catalyst whose motivational propulsion will synthesize his pensive analytic re/formulations, George Smiley pursues his subject with a cunningly subtle rigour which wisely sublimates feelings of joy.

While occasionally permitting its ephemeral presence.

In order to thwart bureaucratic instabilities.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

An imaginative inquisitive highly organized youth sets out into the unknown to find someone who can help him solve a mystery left behind after his father dies in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. A small envelope is discovered in his father's room after the fact containing both a key and the word "black" written upon it. Having no knowledge in regards to what/whom the word "black" refers nor the lock to which the key corresponds, Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) looks up everyone with the last name Black in New York City and systematically sets out to question them. During his information search, he befriends an elderly man renting a room in his grandmother's apartment who can't speak and communicates through writing (Max von Sydow as The Renter). The two become friends as they travel throughout New York meeting new people, emboldened by purpose.

Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close humanizes research while providing a matrix through which one can rationally seek solutions to seemingly interminable problems.

As long as you stick to the plan.

By populating his thesis with living breathing representatives of New York's undeniable particularity, Oskar indirectly creates a community while simultaneously emphasizing the tragedy of 9/11, thereby universalizing his personal loss.

The research process itself is romanticized as it becomes apparent that sometimes elucidating sought after truths is secondary to the divergent revelations of the quest wherein they are potentially sequestered, as new avenues of inquiry are brought to life.

If the actual question indeed finds an answer the secondary/tertiary/. . . tributaries can still be categorically synthesized through the production of a multidimensional social democratic topography, modestly celebrating the new (the collection of letters Oskar sends out in the end).

The degree of ease with which such a topography is manifested directly corresponds to the intensity of the author's desire to illuminate his or her original inquiry.