Vertigo Releasing
MOVIE REVIEW
Reality (2023)
They say “the truth hurts, so write fiction” but rarely are we meant to take an axiom so literally. Nowadays the dust barely settles on a real-life event before a dramatization of it is made (for some reason Mark Wahlberg specializes in this, though Viggo Mortensen isn’t above it either). In the last decade verbatim theater, in which actors use transcripts of genuine real-life words to act out the thoughts and feelings of the characters, has become commonplace. But this happens less in film, though things are changing there too, with “Reality” at the head of the pack. Director Tina Satter has adapted her own play, “Is This a Room,” with cowriter James Paul Dallas for the script of “Reality.” I say script; the text is based on the two-hour-ish recording made by the F.B.I. on June 3, 2017, when it arrested Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) on suspicion of espionage. It has been condensed but a disclaimer at the start promises authenticity. And there are enough strange little asides and people stumbling over their words in the ways people talk in real life but written dialogue rarely captures. This adds an air of wait-for-it to the proceedings, but for dramatic strength it leaves much to be desired.