as Chelsea Manning. It’s

a passion play. Audiences 

unfamiliar with solitary confinement are

broken; during the Super Bowl ad 

we observe certain audiences in night 

vision. We collage them, weeping 

quietly in their chairs, or as they shield 

their eyes. There is passing 

reference of US war crimes in Afghanistan/Iraq 

in the second act. A photo is passed

along to different characters - every

one is played by Scarlett Johansson and

we watch their gaze briefly fogging

over. Nothing specific. There's a montage as 

ms. Johansson gets used to her 

cells, which- through clever cutting- 

is juxtaposed with 

the beginning of HRT. One 

doctor is an amalgamation of all her doctors.

All the appointments take

one afternoon in 2008, or 2010 or 2012 and 

we see her smile crookedly as her 

portrait is painted, closing up. She is

now staring defiantly/angrily at the wall, as

the camera wobbles. In act three, 

the all-is-lost, the camera lingers 

on a shiv-like pencil/wire/pills before cutting to

Scarlett Johansson unconsciously

carted out of the room, pursued by the same 

army men, the announcement of her freedom. 

Scarlett Johansson releases her head, 

a single tear streaks down 

the grime on her cheek. Her vital

signs beep. In an uncut director's 

edition, as a kind of post-script, she is being

interviewed about the Corona-virus, asked 

whether we are all Chelsea Mannings now? 

She says nothing, except smiling, her

gaze a lake she never visited as a child, 

interrogating/questioning, it appears to you. Cut.