Showing Isn’t Telling

Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

I watched Reality last week. It’s a film about Reality Winner, an NSA contractor who leaked a classified document to a news website. The film makes a distinct choice: it uses only recordings. Mainly, it’s the recording of the FBI interviewing Reality in her home, but there are some news broadcast recordings, and a recording of a phone call she made to her sister from jail.

Reality's story opens up a host of questions that would be worth exploring. Each of these could have been a fascinating angle for a film. There’s the topic of the document itself—Russian interference in the US elections. There’s the fact that the DOJ prosecuted Reality for leaking information it later made public itself, making Reality’s punishment look exceptionally harsh. There’s the ethics of the news website sending the documents for authentication, thereby failing to protect a source and creating disincentives for whistleblowers. But you get none of these from this film.

The old writing advice goes “Show, don’t tell”. I admire Tina Satter for sticking to a rule she had imposed. And I get that a woman named Reality deserves—begs for, even—a hyperrealistic format. But showing is a technique, not a philosophy. The film's format deprives the viewer of the actual story. I didn’t get any of the whys in this film, and I wanted to so badly.

I never liked “Show, don’t tell”. I’m a storyteller, not a storyshower. And I know it’s cooler to play with form and medium. But I want an actual story. And especially when I watch a film about a real-world topic, I want to know more about the topic afterwards.