Must See Reality

2023's Reality is a film I've been itching to talk about for a while.  It's the superior of two films (though the other one's not bad either) about Reality Winner, the former NSA translator who was sent to prison for leaking classified documents to The Intercept about the Russian government's attempts to hack US voting machines during the 2016 presidential elections.  Don't worry if the subject matter doesn't grab you; it's a taught psychological thriller with a unique capacity to force you into the anxiety if being interrogated.  It's also the perfect reminder of how impressed we all were with Sidney Sweeney when she was undeniably talented indie darling, before she became some kind of weird sex symbol of the culture wars.  She's really great in this, playing against Josh Hamilton (Kicking and Screaming, The House of Yes) and a whole supporting cast who are all perfectly, terrifyingly banal.

What's so unique about Reality?  Well, it's one of very few, if any, examples of Verbatim Theater in film.  Yes, it started out as a play, and even on stage, Verbatim Theater is pretty rare.  The concept is simple: to take a real world transcript of an actual event, or in this day and age, an audio recording, and perform that as your script, word for word, including every pause and tic as it actually happened in real life.  Probably the best known is Bloody Sunday, a 2005 London play built out of the Saville Report study of the 1972 Bogside Massacre in Ireland.  The most most famous example up to know on film would surely be The Colour of Justice, a 1999 BBC TWO production based on the courtroom transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence murder trials.  Man, do I wish the BFI would give us that on disc; I'd love to see it.  Here in the US, the closest examples I can really think of are the work of Anna Deveare Smith, who conducted and curated hundreds of interviews based on a handful of subjects, like the LA riots, then performed all of the interview segments herself, first on stage and later on HBO.  We desperately need those VHS-only releases updated to disc, too - they're so great!

But Reality is the truest, purest example yet: it's literally based on one, unedited audio recording, performed in real time, from beginning to end.  It enables director Tina Satter to slip you inside the interrogation in a way no traditional dramatization or documentary could, leaving you with this strangely relaxed sense of danger, in a way that reminds me of Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent, but of course in a very different style.  And admittedly, I could see some of the strength of Reality being diluted if lots of films and shows started doing this same thing - it does seem like a fairly repeatable gimmick.  It wouldn't be quite so exciting if its novelty were stripped away and we were seeing it on Court TV every day.  But it would still be pretty damned effective, and honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of it.

Reality was first released on DVD in Australia from Madman in 2023.  But it didn't hit blu until 2024 when Metropolitan put it out in France.  I'm always anxious about French discs' subtitles being forced, though (to be clear, I don't believe they are; I just didn't want to risk it) so I held out for the German release from Plaion Pictures a few months later (that subtitle on the cover translates to "TRUTH HAS ITS PRICE," if you were curious).  To this date, those are still our only three options, and I wouldn't hold my breath for any more, as it was acquired by HBO Max to be a streaming exclusive here in the states.

2024 German Plaion BD.

For starters, you'll notice plenty of grain in the image, but it must be fake, post production stuff, because this was shot on digital (confirmed in this interview with the DP).  It still lets us gauge how well the image is presented on disc, though, in that the grain is sharp and clear.  This is a contemporary film, so we're not worried about how well the elements have been preserved or scanned.  But it would surely have to be softer on the DVD, and looks like it could look a little bit better in 4k, but not much.  The aspect ratio is 2.00:1 (that interview claims it should be 2.1, but I just checked on HBOMax and it's exactly 2.0 there as well), and audio consists of the original English 5.1 track, plus a German 5.1 dub, both in DTS-HD with optional German subtitles.  And on-screen slugs are in their original English.

Extras ain't much.  There's an all too brief featurette that barely explains the concept and lets us hear from the director, Sweeney and even the real Winner.  Unfortunately, it's like five minutes long.  They filmed her in multiple locations, and they have that little footage to show for it?  Where ya stashin' the goods and why can't have a look?  Anyway, besides that, there's just English and German versions of the trailer and a couple of bonus German trailers.  And they do give you reversible artwork so you can hide the ugly green ratings logo, which is a welcome touch.

Apart from trailers, extras are the same in France (and Australia), so you're presumably just as well off getting one blu as the other.  But you should get this film, because it's a great and unique film, and you don't need to still be interested in Russiagate to appreciate it.