Adam Driver as Daniel J. Jones in The Report
On September 8, The Report had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (its second premiere to Sundance in January). Depicting the journey of a man trying to defend the truth in a nation’s capital corrupted by a group of the power-obsessed, The Report showcases the ethical battles between people and government. Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver) is a Senate staffer tasked with the responsibility of investigating the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program post-9/11, after it was discovered that the CIA had destroyed numerous tapes, hundreds of hours, of interrogations of Al-Qaeda detainees. In an effort to find out why, Jones worked tirelessly over the span of five years, his (along with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) work culminating in a 6,779-page report (with roughly 38,000 footnotes).
In January 2007, Jones joined the SSCI, after serving as an intelligence analyst for the FBI. Originally overseeing counter-terrorism efforts and the transition of the FBI into an intelligence-focused agency, Jones shifted his focus once it was discovered in December 2007 that the CIA had destroyed interrogation tapes of Al-Qaeda detainees. In March 2009, Jones led the investigation into the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Working under Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), and with extensive dedication and commitment, he scoured through six million pages of government material, among other methods of research; by December 2012, Jones had produced a near-7,000-page report detailing the findings of his investigation.
Content-heavy, sure, but the film does a great job of organizing the facts and events by keeping track of a timeline and illustrating important dates. So where does the intrigue lie? Driver’s performance, the relevance and scale of the issue, and the tension between power and ethics all contribute to making this film worthwhile. It is also somewhat heartwarming to know there are people out there serving their country with good intentions, fighting to defend the truth and hold our country to high ethical and moral standards. Throughout The Report, we see ineffective interrogations, led by a psychologist who has never interrogated anyone, characterized by brutal and inhumane tactics (aka, torture). Short clips in between scenes show the violent extent to which interrogators went to get just a single drop of information; in the end, we find out none of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked—the detainees either gave false information or information the CIA already knew. Yet, these interrogators never paid for what they did. In fact, just before the credits, it is revealed that every interrogator was promoted, one even to Director of the CIA. As a character notes in The Report, “it’s only legal if it works.”
If the interrogation scenes aren’t frightening enough, what seems to be truly heartbreaking is the fact that the CIA had no intention of publishing Jones’ report, after years and thousands of pages of proven dedication with factually substantial results (absolutely zero factual errors). This realization leads Jones to become some version of a whistleblower, as he refuses any attempt to stop public release of the report. Here then the question becomes not what will someone do to hide the truth, but what will someone do to unveil it? Eventually, after eight months of redaction review, the executive summary of the report, a mere 525 pages, was released by the SSCI.
In the post-premiere Q&A, the cast highlighted Daniel J. Jones’ important role in this project, with Driver stating that Jones being on set quite often brought authenticity to the film. Driver also touched on bringing certain themes to life in The Report, saying, “You have to know what you’re saying… but you can’t really just do that because then it turns into a book report or a documentary… those are the facts but they’re almost immaterial in a way in playing the scenes…[director Scott Z. Burns and I] talked a lot about the theme of obsession, or someone who not only is challenging his own moral compass but [also] the faith that he’s lost in an institution that he grew to trust, and what is not only his moral identity but the moral identity of the country, or is that even his job? And then take all that and bottle it up because it’s not your job, you’re just a Senate staffer, there’s a chain of command that you have to follow…” The subject matter of staying true to your moral and ethical values runs deep in The Report. In regards to this, Burns stated, “There’s a phrase that I’m always very uncomfortable with, which is this phrase ‘American exceptionalism.’ I don’t feel that’s something me, as an American, gets to declare. I think that’s something that the rest of the world gets to decide about us by the way we live and the way we treat each other.”
You can watch the trailer here:
The Report is out in theaters on November 15 and on Amazon Prime Video November 29.
Nadia Jurkovich is the treasurer of CUFP and a junior in Columbia Engineering.