A couple of FBI agents turn up at the house of a young woman called Reality Winner as she arrives home with some groceries. They have a warrant to search the property, they say. Reality’s reaction is on the range of the expected, somewhere between stunned and acquiescent. But she seems to be taking this sudden intrusion in her stride, attempting to carry on as normal though appearing unsure as to what normal looks like when the FBI has just arrived. The FBI guys ask Reality if she has any pets inside the house, whether there are guns in there, if anyone else might be in there. Reality behaves as if she has nothing to hide. She gives them all the help she can. “I’m gonna make this as easy as possible for you guys,” says Reality, with a shrug and half a nervous smile.
Going to make what as easy as possible?
The guys are courteous and affable. They make small talk about rescue dogs and about how much weight Reality can bench. But they are there for some reason and they make it clear that for all the carry-on-as-normal behaviour there are also some new normals. They do not let Reality go into the house on her own, for instance. They won’t let her touch her phone. They keep her outside on the front lawn, just chatting about everything except what they have come to talk about until another team of FBI guys has arrived and is well underway with a thorough search of the premises.
Then the three of them go inside to an empty room Reality never uses and the FBI agents start their probing. Gentle, non-accusatory questioning, sympathetic, carrot not stick. No good cop, bad cop. More gentle cop and lovely cop. And gradually, softly, by stealth and with only the odd verbal slip-up indicating what’s really playing out here, the hunters advance on their prey.
The remarkable thing about Reality is that this three-hander could have been written by Harold Pinter in his The Birthday Party years. Slippery pleasantries, pregnant moments and menacing ambiguities abound. The two-against-one dynamic, with one party knowing something the other doesn’t, it’s all very Pinteresque. Yet the whole film is taken verbatim from the recording made by the FBI guys on the day they went to interview Reality Winner in June 2017 about some classified documents she might have taken from work.
Donald Trump was president back then, and he’d just fired James Comey as the boss of the FBI the month before, a factoid director Tina Satter has dropped in right in the film’s opening moments, on a TV in the corner where Reality works. This turns out to be relevant.
If all this spoiler-avoiding caginess is irritating you, it’s because you know the facts of the case, which went on to grab headlines – national security, spying, Russian interference in US elections, jail time etc etc – but if you don’t I’ll say no more about the plot. In truth there isn’t much more to say beyond the fact that it’s exploring the various loyalties a citizen might be torn by. Instead let’s go to the performances and the outstanding Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner. I’d watched Sweeney the night before getting up to all sorts of fun in the TV show Euphoria but she couldn’t be more different here – deglammed, dressed down, clothes on – and putting on a formidable display in a very unforgiving role. Not only is the camera is on her the whole time but Sweeney is playing someone who isn’t quite sure where her own “performance” should be pitched. It’s brilliant stuff.
Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis as the two FBI guys dance around Sweeney’s performance. They are also brilliant. They’d make a great Goldberg and McCann, Pinter’s two sinister uninvited guests in The Birthday Party.
Satter originated this bijou (and pretty short, at 83mins) drama as an off-Broadway show, then took it to Broadway and has now (with a screenplay assist from James Paul Dallas and a new cast) turned it into a superb film. It grips, grips, grips from beginning to end.
Reality – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
