"Reality" and "Blackberry"

I didn't know the story of Reality Winner, the NSA translator who leaked Russia's 2016 election interference to the media, until I saw this movie.  Because of the highly charged political atmosphere and the misinformation surrounding the election, the film's title seems especially pointed, while also being a lucky coincidence.  Director Tina Satter adapts her own play, which began as a piece of verbatim theater.  Every word of dialogue is taken directly from transcripts of Winner's recorded arrest and interrogation, and it's fascinating to see them play out.

Winner (Sydney Sweeney) is arrested at her home and questioned by FBI agents Garick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis) in 2017.  The process is not violent, and for nearly the first hour it's almost humdrum on its surface, as Winner makes arrangements for her pets, gets her groceries put away, and makes small talk with the eerily patient FBI agents.  They keep asking her if she knows how she may have mishandled sensitive information at her translation job, but don't start questioning her in earnest until halfway through the film.  This results in a terrific buildup in tension that is unlike any other thriller I could name.  The filmmakers strive to do right by Reality (and reality), doing their best to recreate the arrest and interrogation without sensationalizing them.  The actors do a lot of wonderful, subtle work, especially Sydney Sweeney, who maintains Winner's rock-solid composure throughout.  

"Reality" is low budget and not especially ambitious when it comes to the filmmaking, but there's one bit of screencraft that I found very effective.  Whenever the film reaches a part of the transcript that is redacted, not only do the characters become muted, but they disappear from the frame entirely, accompanied by an oppressive buzzing sound.  It's jarring and disturbing every time that it happens.  Despite offering no opinion about Reality Winner's guilt, "Reality" nonetheless does an excellent job of humanizing her through this brief encounter, and prompting the viewer to seek out the rest of her story.  That's certainly what I did, the moment the film was over.            

Now, on to "Blackberry."  If this recent wave of films about products and business deals has brought us nothing else, it's brought us a legitimately good piece of cinema in "BlackBerry," about the rise and fall of Ontario-based Research In Motion ("RIM"), the company behind the BlackBerry mobile phone.  Written and directed by Matt Johnson, and co-written by Matthew Miller, "BlackBerry" is a profile of two men - engineer Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), and executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) - who create the dominant smartphone of the early 2000s.  The first half of the film is an underdog story, where the odd couple pairing of a mumbly perfectionist and a rage-prone bully recognize each other's strengths and form a lucrative partnership.  The second half shows how that same partnership, facing subsequent crises, comes to disaster. 

"BlackBerry" absolutely takes its cues from "The Social Network," but rather than just charting the dawn of the digital age, it presents a whole history of the Silicon Valley startup era in miniature.  Lazaridis and his partner Doug Fregin (Johnson) initially lead a group of brilliant, but stereotypically nerdy engineers, who have the knowhow to create the BlackBerry, but not the business acumen to sell it.  A bad pitch puts them in contact with Balsillie, who recognizes the potential of the device, and tries to buy the company outright.  He settles for being co-CEO with Lazaridis, after contributing a major investment, and proceeds to transform RIM into a corporate giant, with a far more aggressive, institutional culture to match.   

I know Howerton and Baruchel primarily as comedic actors, but they're both very strong here in dramatic roles - or roles that are so darkly satirical that  it's hard to tell the difference.  Howerton exudes intensity and self-loathing in a way that's hard to look away from.  In the last act he's primarily concerned with a deal to purchase a hockey team, a deal that has nothing to do with the Blackberry, but everything to do with Balsille's downfall.  Baruchel is saddled with a crummy wig, but his Laziridis never feels like a caricature.  There's something bitterly sad about him choosing the money over his principles, and realizing the true cost of his ambitions.  

The production is very Canadian, very nerd-literate, and very nostalgic - but only up to a point.  Where "Air" reveled in its '80s milieu, Matt Johnson keeps the classic media clip montage contained to the opening titles, and all the subsequent references are either narratively or thematically relevant - sometimes in surprising ways.  The whole film was a pleasant surprise, and at the time of writing might be my favorite film of 2023 so far.

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