REVIEW: Reality [2023]

Rating: TV-MA | Runtime: 83 minutes
Release Date: May 29th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Home Box Office (HBO)
Director(s): Tina Satter
Writer(s): Tina Satter & James Paul Dallas / Tina Satter (play)

I think you just messed up.

It will never not be compelling to me to dramatize a real-life event from a verbatim recording of it regardless of whether the event itself or its reenactment matches its intrigue. The concept alone is enough to get you inching closer to the edge of your seat because it removes a layer of artifice. This is what happened. These are the words that were spoken.

Artistic license must still be considered (even a photograph bears the subjectivity of its photographer), but you cannot deny the authenticity of the moment. Its awkward pauses and incongruous reactions as well as our knowledge that some details remain absent insofar as the internal motivations and context of each character. Tina Satter’s Reality (adapted with James Paul Dallas from her play) allows us to witness an historically resonant conversation so that we may attempt to parse the truth removed from the biased editorializing of a for-profit, partisan media that’s lost all sense of objectivity.

In many respects, this isn’t even Reality Winner’s (a very good Sydney Sweeney) story. It’s really that of Agent Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Agent Taylor (Marchánt Davis) since they’re the ones with the recorder. They’re the ones in control of the situation—smiling and talking with a calm demeanor despite the obvious power imbalance facing their “voluntary” subject. They’re steering the conversation, deciding when to walk away and return, and biding time as other officers and agents conduct their search of Winner’s home.

So, there’s still a predatory demeanor to the whole (augmented by redactions manifested via aural and visual interference). It’s one that Satter does well to keep intact by way of body language and proximity in how Hamilton always moves closer to Sweeney whenever his Garrick needs to impose authority as opposed to his otherwise manipulated veneer of empathy.

We aren’t therefore watching to gain insight into what happened. We know what happened. Reality Winner sent classified information to the The Intercept, they in turn unwittingly burned her identity, and she paid the price by serving four years of a five-plus year sentence in jail for espionage. The film is instead a document on the interrogation process.

How these Agents humanize themselves, build a rapport, and carefully choose their words to lead their suspect where they need her to go while also ensuring a consistent tone and pace to catch her off-guard and receive the seemingly innocuous facts that ultimately corroborate what they already know. It’s a masterclass of deception rather than coercion wherein Reality’s confusion turns to fear and finally acceptance. Their “curiosity” and “compassion” gradually securing trust through subterfuge.

How much of that subterfuge is real and how much is inferred by Satter remains unknown, but that fact only adds to the intrigue. Maybe Garrick really does have a sinus infection causing him to cough. Or maybe it’s a dog allergy that proves he’s been lying from the beginning. Satter implies the latter by always having him react when near the dog or the dog’s kennel. Artistic license? Maybe.

And how about the clip at the end with a media personality talking about Winner “hating America.” Was he fabricating that quote or did Satter intentionally leave it out of the film since the moment never happens on-screen? It just helps to prove that everything we consume is a dramatization in some fashion. Everything is filtered through a prism of bias. Give this same script to a QANON conspiracy theorist and they will deliver a vastly different interpretation. The only person who knows the truth is Reality. And, by all accounts, she regrets nothing.