This past Wednesday, September 14, thousands of moviegoers all over the country flocked to the 700 lucky theaters that were allowed to present an early screening of the movie "Snowden", directed by Oliver Stone. The movie came out nationwide two days later, on Friday, September 16. The early screening on Wednesday was part of an exclusive event called "Snowden Live" (sponsored by Fathom Events). Viewers were shown the whole film first and then live coverage of an Q&A session with director Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, and Edward Snowden himself (he was video-chatting from Moscow instead of attending the event in person, for obvious reasons). Luckily for my readers, I was able to attend the showing of "Snowden Live" at the Patton Creek Carmike in Birmingham, mostly thanks to my History and Film professor, who made seeing the movie a class requirement. But I think I would have gone anyway, had I known about it without having the class.

The movie itself was pretty good, but not fantastic. I'd probably give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars (there are only three or four films that I would give the full 5, to be honest). I was impressed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting, but I felt that he looked more like the "let's-play" YouTuber Markiplier than Snowden. Nicolas Cage shows up for, like, a minute, playing a washed-out intelligence agent, which cracked me up because I kept mentally hearing his screams from "Wicker Man" ("NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!"). Some actors you can't see in other roles without cracking up. There was too much of a focus on Snowden's relationship with his girlfriend Lindsay Mills (played by Shailene Woodley), but that was probably Oliver Stone's way of adding some dramatic spice to the movie. Sex sells, and many people would be bored just watching a nerdy guy uncover jarring secrets regarding the government's surveillance of everyday citizens. The movie is definitely more of a biopic, focusing on Edward Snowden as a person rather than on his cause, which is ironic since Snowden has constantly said that this issue is bigger than him.

We watch as Snowden is discharged from the Army Special Forces after breaking both his legs, we revel when he finally gets the chance to serve his country by being in the CIA, and then we share in his shock when he discovers that the NSA is able to use programs like Xkeyscore to collect metadata on people and even turn on personal webcams to spy on them. Throughout the movie, Snowden finds work with the CIA, NSA, the CIA again, and then a government contractor called Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. The jobs and groups he works with begin to blur together in what he refers to as the "revolving door of the intelligence industry," but technical details like how the different computer programs worked are easily explained so that even the most technologically-challenged of the audience can understand. Finally, he steals the data from work and takes it to Hong Kong to present it to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, both of whom Snowden has picked to be the bearers of the bad news.

The actual scene where Snowden steals the documents is pretty funny; he puts them all on a chip and hides the chip inside his Rubik's Cube. As he goes through security on the way out of the building, he hands the Rubik's Cube to a security guard to solve it as he himself is going through the detector. Since the Cube is never put through the detector, the chip is never found, and Snowden gets off without a scratch. Remember this scene, because I'm going to come back to it later.

So the movie was pretty decent, but my favorite part was definitely the exclusive Q&A afterward. As cool as it was to see Oliver Stone and the two actors, the real Edward Snowden was the selling point for me. Seeing Snowden livestreaming from the tundras of Russia, where he has been granted asylum, was a huge deal. Here he is: probably the most wanted man in the world, and he's communicating with people in the country that wants to severely punish him via webcam. There's something ridiculously bold about doing that, and of course we all know Snowden is ballsy in general, whether we think of him as a patriot or a traitor. To see such a geeky, normal guy do such fantastic things has definitely inspired me (I've always seen him as a hero, by the way). Oliver Stone even compared him to his former film subject, Ron Kovic, whose commitment to protesting Vietnam (a war both he and Stone fought in) inspired Stone's Born on the Fourth of July. Snowden is special, according to Stone, because "young people don't [take a stand]; they tend to think along with the group."

During the Q&A, the interviewer brought up many great questions, such as what is the responsibility of the actor when he or she is playing a real person who is still alive. Most impertinent to the History and Film class was the question of how true is a movie like this. History is a construction, be it in books or film; we can never truly capture the reality, only interpretations of it. Stone creates stand-in characters and events in the movie that point to larger themes, but is that a crime? The interviewer asked Snowden about the Rubik's Cube scene. Snowden wryly responded by saying that he can't say if it actually happened or not (he can't be admitting stuff like that when his enemies are watching), but he said, "I gave all my colleagues Rubik's Cubes, so they were always coming in and out." We can never know for sure, but now we have fodder for speculation.

When asked about the importance of his actions, Snowden launched into a passionate polemic regarding privacy. He brought up the Nazi origins of the phrase "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." He didn't technically say that our government is exactly like the Nazi regime, but he juxtaposes them in such a way that it should make us all feel uncomfortable. "Privacy," he continued, "isn't about something to hide. It's about something to protect...Privacy is the fountainhead of rights." In true Libertarian fashion, Snowden promoted the rights of individuals to be able to have a sense of self, which he claimed could only be possible with the right to privacy.

Snowden then started to explain how we, the audience, can fight back against government surveillance. He encouraged us to cover our webcams with Band-Aids or masking tape. In the middle of this spiel, however, his communication link to the live event in NYC breaks, and we are unable to see or hear him. Video-chatting is always a pain, but the way it cut out when he began to instruct people on protecting privacy was just plain eerie. Luckily, Snowden's connection resumes, and he picks up where he left off. The most important thing we can do about privacy is to have conversations about it. "Don't be silent," Snowden pleads with the audience, eyebrows knit with urgency.

Other interesting things happened at the NYC stage where the session was filmed. Fellow NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, was in the audience, and Oliver Stone–whose birthday was last Thursday–was presented with a cake while the audience sang "Happy Birthday." All in all, it was a cool event, and I was lucky to be able to witness it.

I definitely encourage my readers to go see the movie, not because it's a fantastic movie, but because I think it gives a great perspective on Snowden. In the media, he has been cast as a millennial villain for what he has done. The movie raises questions about how we label people based on political bias. But most importantly, it exposes a terrifying truth which should bother us more than it seems to. I have started taping over the webcam of my computer after learning this lesson.