Snowden: Destined for Hollywood without an Epilogue

David or Judas, a herald facing Moloch, alone and unarmed, or a faceless traitor digging a hole into the hull of the national boat: On the borderline of good and evil, Edward Snowden is already a fictional character whose fate has all the attributes of a Hollywood blockbuster.

The epilogue of the Snowden affair has not yet been written, but the important part is elsewhere: Writers in charge of the script would have to create ambiguity in a man who has been publicly criticized by his country, at the risk of creating a binary figure somewhere between black and white, which literature and films know how to do so well.

“The story has lots of potential for dramatic adaptation, perhaps because the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ elements of the leading character are so ambiguous,” suggested Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. “I imagine any movie adaptation will use this ambiguity and portray Snowden as neither a hero nor a villain,” he said. “It’s a very modern American story.”

For his fans, the young former IT consultant who worked for a subcontractor of the National Security Agency is a modern paladin, a Samaritan with glasses, ready to sacrifice himself in order to save the planet. San-Antonio might have described him as “a cry from the guard dogs of cyber heroes.”*

To his detractors, however, Snowden is a traitor of the worst kind, whose crimes will aid enemies of the U.S. in order to wreak havoc.

People have been saying everything and anything about Snowden. That he acted alone or on behalf of foreign interests, that he is a genius and a visionary or an insignificant engineer, immature and unaware, who takes sticks of dynamite to use as matchsticks.

In short, we do not know him, but he fascinates us.

“Every spy novelist in the world is not writing at the moment, because they are glued to this — it is the biggest spy case there has been in decades,” said Jeremy Duns, who wrote three novels about a British agent in the Cold War.

As do many others, the writer expects that a book or a film, sooner rather than later, will shed light on the Snowden affair, which one would think came straight out of a John le Carré work, with its many nuances and moral conflicts over loyalty and betrayal.

Snowden will inevitably share the limelight with the NSA, an ultra-secret agency that came to light in 1998 with the film “Enemy of the State,” which featured the duo Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

Well before the 9/11 attacks, the film portrayed the extent of the surveillance and administrative powers of an agency that would stop at nothing — not even murder — to complete its mission.

In what his critics have described as paranoia, Edward Snowden has brought to light the threat of being assassinated by the U.S. government.

But the “truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped,” he declared to The Guardian in a phrase that would make a respectable subtitle in a film.

An ordinary spy, Edward Snowden? Not exactly, and that is what makes him even more interesting.

The slender man with a pale face sprinkled with moles under a sparse blanket of facial hair, who threw coldness into Washington’s relationships with Beijing and Moscow, looks more like a computer science student who has outgrown his moccasins.

If James Bond seduced languid Amazonians on the poolside with a glass of scotch or a Martini, Snowden dines on a pizza and a Pepsi without letting the computer screen out of his sight.

“The geek in the van has become the Bourne,” said Duns, referencing the Jason Bourne series written by Robert Ludlum, whose title character was charismatically played by Matt Damon on the big screen.

Just as there is not an epilogue, neither is there a name for the Snowden affair film (“Snowden Confidential”? “The Man Who Knew Way Too Much”? “The Spy Who Came From a Warm Region?” “Edward Spyhands”?)

“The Terminal” has already been taken. Steven Spielberg told this well-known true story of a man who spent years inside of an airport. As did Tom Hanks, Edward Snowden has found himself immobilized in Moscow, living next to airplanes, waiting for a sure destination. Perhaps Havana, Caracas or Quito …

* Editor’s Note: San-Antonio is the main character of a series of crime novels by French author Frédéric Dard.