Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 4 September

Reality (Satter, 2023)

This time last year Sydney Sweeney was best known for two tele­vi­sion series that I hadn’t seen: Euphoria and The White Lotus. So, when Reality turned up in the fest­iv­al, I didn’t know who she was and pre­sumed that she was anoth­er one of those prodi­giously tal­en­ted young indie act­ors who elev­ated everything she was involved with but didn’t pre­dict that she would become one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.

Over the sum­mer, her rom-com col­lab­or­a­tion with Glen Powell, Anyone But You became a break-out hit a couple of months later her producer-actor turn as a haunted nun in Immaculate also blew me away.

This ver­batim role as a whis­tleblower under pres­sure from gov­ern­ment invest­ig­at­ors is her at her ‘real­ist’ so far. It’s a fant­ast­ic per­form­ance and a grip­ping little film. 

When the ori­gin­al mater­i­al is inher­ently dra­mat­ic and the shap­ing is bril­liantly deft you get Reality, based on Tina Satter’s own stage play Is This a Room.

With the only dia­logue in the piece taken ver­batim from the ori­gin­al tran­scribed record­ings, Reality recre­ates the day in June 2017 when nation­al secur­ity trans­lat­or – and former Air Force seni­or air­man – Reality Winner is raided by the FBI and inter­rog­ated at her home about the ‘mis­hand­ling’ of some documents.

What starts out as a ‘what­was­doneit’ (if that’s a word) over time becomes a ‘who­dun­nit’ and then even­tu­ally a ‘why­dun­nit’ as the agents slowly reveal how much they already know and Winner crumbles under the pressure.

An insight into inter­rog­a­tion tech­niques – in this case quietly meth­od­ic­al, on the sur­face respect­ful, con­stantly ask­ing if she needs water or wants to sit down, the wel­fare of her pets, etc – view­ers will won­der why Winner nev­er stops to ask for a law­yer. It’s clear that she still sees her­self as a pat­ri­ot and wants to help, at least that is until the net closes too tight.

Gripping from whoah to go, largely as a res­ult of lead act­or Sydney Sweeney, by the end you ought to be as out­raged as Winner was about what she was see­ing from her gov­ern­ment – and about how she was treated by it as a result.

Also among those NZIFF 2023 cap­sules, Saint Omer and the doc­u­ment­ary Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams.

Reality is not to be con­fused with Matteo Garrone’s 2013 satire of the same name.

Where to watch Reality

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon

Australia: Streaming on Binge

Canada: Not cur­rently available

Ireland and UK: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Max

RNZ website update

This week RNZ has taken anoth­er step to improv­ing their digit­al and online audio exper­i­ence with a new web­site play­er and changes to nav­ig­a­tion and an improved pod­casts page.

I was a little con­cerned that my old con­tent from Widescreen and Rancho Notorious might have dis­ap­peared in the change as we nev­er fit­ted into any of the RNZ con­tent paradigms at the time (and still don’t, to be honest).

Widescreen – nearly ten years of writ­ten art­icles and reviews as well as our early attempts at video – is avail­able under the Series tab. And Rancho Notorious can be found through the search func­tion. I’ll see if I can cre­ate a tag for all the Rancho Notorious con­tent that will provide a per­man­ent URL for this shows. They were fun.