There is little doubt that the real-life story of Edward Snowden – to the degree that we know what that is – is worthy of cinema. Last week we translated ‘Edward Snowden is No Enemy of Our State‘ from the Wiener Zeitung of Austria, which likened the saga to Enemy of the State starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Today, for Russia’s Gazeta, columnist Natalia Gevorkyan offers her suggestion for the inevitable upcoming film, which she thinks should be called The Ghost of Sheremetyevo, starring Russian spy Anna Chapman and either Johnny Deep or Brad Pitt. But no matter how thrilling such a film will be, Gevorkyan finds what all this says about America to be more than a little disheartening.
For Gazeta, Natalia Gevorkyan lets her creative juices flow in part:
One minute it’s the transit zone, the next it’s a capsule hotel. Anna Chapman, heroically prepared to marry the guy, provides the obligatory touch of eroticism. Obviously this should be set at transit zone E, the newest and therefore best suited to filming, right there on the floor, no hotels or beds, just pure hardcore.
Russian leaders gives the former foreign agent an opportunity to meet and explain himself to Russia’s present-day foreign agents, whom it is now fashionable to call human rights activists. The latter, in their turn, demand that rather than creating competition in this already-crowded field, the former should be sent home, to a court, to prison.
The intelligence services of a world struck dumb by Snowden, starting with Russia’s, promptly uncover their dust-covered typewriters and go unequivocally offline, back to record keeping on paper. No more virtual toys, no more gadgets, and no more Internet-enabled phones, either. Just dependable, tried and true old stuff.
Vladimir Putin, with mixed joy and disgust, flies to his Sochi dacha, taking with him a package of pre-translated transcripts. He loathes traitors, but he adores top secret material. Robert Redford for the first time laments that age has taken its toll. Snowden’s lonesome girl shoots sandy landscapes, drinks cocktails with umbrellas and sends encoded SMS messages (as opposed to files). Microsoft justifies itself thus: yes, we gave away information, but only in accordance with court orders. Google and the rest quickly dismiss agents planted at the NSA who it knows by name. Life carries on, but will never be the same.
READ ON IN ENGLISH OR RUSSIAN, OR READ MORE TRANSLATED and English-language foreign press coverage as the NSA surveillance story continues to unfold at Worldmeets.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US