ABSTRACT
The flourishing of reality programming and first-person media, which as Jon Dovey notes emphasized the ‘performance of individual identities’ also exerted its influence on the theatrical documentary. Edward Snowden reinterprets and recodes the original performance through gestures of theatricality, the security contractor as magician shielding the secrets of his tradecraft. Any risibility is closed down verbally by Poitras, and the focus placed squarely on taking seriously the risks expressly to Snowden, isolated from the group by the cuts that replace the original’s panning camera. In discussing the distinction between performance in non-fiction and fiction film, Michael Renov describes it as the difference between requiring the audience to ‘invest belief’ and ‘suspend disbelief’. Moreover, he notes that in non-fiction the ‘ethical stakes are high because real lives are on display’. Snowden draws upon real lives and events, but adopts fiction’s expository tropes to help suspend disbelief in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance.
