When we stumble on a moment where the transcript was censored, the image flickers and glitches, sometimes erasing the characters altogether as though Winner herself were being redacted. Instead, it becomes cinematic in the fluidity and precision of Paul Yee’s excellent closed-space cinematography, and in the pacing of Jennifer Vecchiarello and Ron Dulin’s editing, which is sometimes jittery and sometimes almost unbearably sedate, as Winner observes a snail on the windowsill, or listens to the noises of the agents tramping through her house.īut even with such expert filmmaking at her disposal, and with her cast note-perfect in delivering every “um” and every cough, every non-sequitur and every mumbled aside (the transcript is available online if you want to compare), Satter’s approach continually insists we not take everything at face value, and distrust our own impulses to suspend disbelief. And it’s not because of any picturesque locations - small wonder Satter’s play was titled “Is This a Room?” when the disused kitchen add-on where it mostly takes place was described by Winner herself as “creepy” and looks more like a CIA blacksite. What is less expected, however, is just how well “Reality” lives in the cinematic form. The drama has already been proven to work, in the form of Satter’s stage play based on the same text. And yet the tension never lags, it only ratchets up as Winner, who projects actual innocence and incomprehension right until she caves and admits that the leak came from her, gradually realizes the sheer magnitude of the trouble she is in. They joke about her overweight cat and are impressed by her crossfit regimen and fondness for firearms. A lot of their conversation is banal: While leading their suspect toward a confession, they chat amiably about Winner’s rescue dog, who is penned up in the backyard, occasionally barking. She’s matched in form by Josh Hamilton as Agent Garrick and Marchánt Davis as Agent Taylor, the two men in charge of her questioning. One major, electrifying connection between the facts of the case and their dramatization is provided by a revelatory Sydney Sweeney, playing Winner so convincingly that it’s hard to remember her as the sardonic, pampered teen in “The White Lotus,’ or the nice-girl-turned-nasty in “Euphoria.” From the moment Winner, an ex-USAF Airman fluent in Farsi, Pashto and Dari and working as a translator for an NSA contractor, arrives back to her small house in Augusta, Ga., to discover the FBI waiting for her, Sweeney’s every flicker of emotion, micro-reaction, evasion and retraction, is utterly believable.
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