‘Reality’ review round-up: Sydney Sweeney gives ‘superb micro-calibration’ performance

Emmy contender “Reality” (minimally) dramatizes Reality Winner’s arrest and interrogation by the FBI. The NSA-linguist-turned-whistleblower received a record-long sentence, five years and three months, for stealing and disseminating classified documents related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Tina Satter’s verbatim stage adaptation of the FBI transcript, the curiously (un)punctuated “Is This A Room,” sought to restore some of the agency that was taken from Winner when statements she had made prior to being formally arrested were levied against her in court. Jessica Kiang (Variety) argues just as much, writing that the framework “proves that sometimes what you say can be used for you too.” The play’s filmed rendition, also directed by Satter, got positive write-ups and unanimous praise for lead Sydney Sweeney after premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, where HBO purchased it for an undisclosed price. What had been hyped as a big-screen breakout will instead keep her part of the Emmy conversation.

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The “Euphoria” and “White Lotus” star’s 12th-place ranking in Gold Derby’s Movie/Limited Actress odds puts her ahead of Amber Midthunder (“Prey”), Annette Bening (“Jerry & Marge Go Large”) and Keira Knightley (“Boston Strangler”) – the category’s other telefilm contenders. Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) calls Sweeney’s performance “a superb micro-calibration,” and Tim Grierson (Screen Daily) says she is “especially strong at navigating Reality’s anguished journey from professed bewilderment to artful misdirection to tearful surrender.” 

The movie’s unorthodox structure and aversion to the kind of dramatization typical to the genre (which, as many have pointed out, endows the title with a second meaning) has encouraged meta-narratological observations like, “Satter not only vividly revisits the story, she also makes us question the very relationship between a narrative film and the truth it claims to expose” (Kiang), and, “Satter’s handling of the material…bring this into a more compelling and intriguing space where questions of narrative truth, perception, and the punishment for honesty can be examined” (Caitlin Quinlan, Little White Lies). 

SEE ‘Reality’ trailer: Sydney Sweeney stars as Reality Winner in new Max movie [Watch]

One facet of Satter’s approach has emerged as a point of division. To indicate the transcript’s redacted portions, the playwright and filmmaker distorts viewers’ sensory experience of the film. Quinlan writes, “Satter is adept at building tension but also opts for clumsier, more gimmicky formal choices that derail some of the film’s efficacy…a visual censoring effect that cuts Winner from the frame any time she says something that had been redacted from the transcript feels a little excessive.” Echoing those reservations, Grierson states, “Sometimes, the transcript’s straightforwardness limits the dramatic possibilities, a problem Satter tries to circumvent by introducing visual flourishes that are not entirely successful.” On the other hand, Steph Green (IndieWire) found the creative choice unnervingly effective:  “The first-time screen director makes proceedings feel both genuinely scary and absurdly quotidian, with sudden, scary jolts of noise and jarring editing, [deploying]  an intriguing method of cinematizing the redacted aspects of the transcript through frightening quasi-jumpcuts.” 

“Reality,” currently eighth in our TV Movie odds, began streaming May 29 on Max.

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