By Preston Wilder
“Was that a true story?” asked a young lady as the lights went up in the theatre where I watched The Fifth Estate. The media’s such an echo chamber that we assume everyone else is as immersed in questions of journalistic ethics as we are, but in fact there’s a huge social tranche who’ve barely even heard of Julian Assange, and may not care what he stands for. After all, 20 per cent of Cypriots didn’t even vote in last year’s presidential election (that figure would be much higher elsewhere in the West); why should you care about governments keeping secrets if you’re apolitical? It’s not like they’re spying on your own phone calls, or what illicit websites you choose to visit (right?).
To be fair to the young woman, what she was asking (I think) wasn’t if Assange – the founder of WikiLeaks, played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch – was a real person, but whether his story actually played out as depicted in The Fifth Estate. That’s a valid question, in fact it’s so valid that the film ends with Assange’s real-life criticisms of his own biopic, casting doubt on its motives and veracity. It’s a funny post-modern ending – but it’s also more, because the point is that Assange may have done unethical things (and silenced dissent) to further his personal agenda. Any film making that kind of criticism needs to show that it doesn’t mind criticism of its own lapses.
Ironically, its main lapse isn’t in attacking Assange but in constantly toning down that attack, hedging its bets. On the one hand he’s “the future”, a new kind of journalism (the press is popularly known as ‘the fourth estate’, hence the title); on the other he’s “a celebrity martyr”, borderline-autistic and a raging egomaniac. On the one hand he’s paranoid and impossible to work with, on the other he’s a visionary who insists on doing everything himself. Early on, our hero Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl) discovers that WikiLeaks isn’t the well-staffed organisation it appears to be, but merely Assange taking on various online personae – a twist illustrated by a shot of an office slowly filling up with Julian Assanges. It’s a perfect image of out-of-control narcissism – but the film is too timid, or responsible, to run with that.
Assange is mostly an enabler. WikiLeaks didn’t carry out investigative journalism, but offered a platform for whistle-blowers – like unhappy US soldier Bradley Manning – to divulge top-secret information. Its real importance lay (and lies) in its insistence on total transparency: “Editing reflects bias,” is the motto – which is why it’s different from ‘old’ media and why, for instance, it exposed CIA documents in their entirety, including the names of informants. The film shows the irresponsibility of that (Laura Linney plays a spook trying to get her source out of Libya after WikiLeaks blows his cover), and of course Assange is an outsider even in his own movie – because it’s seen through the eyes of the more moderate Berg (it’s based on a book he wrote), a fellow hacker and friend-turned-foe. Yet it does also try to explain the man, albeit unconvincingly.
Cumberbatch is all tics and mannerisms, but a back-story does emerge. Assange had a troubled childhood, much of it spent in a harsh religious cult that fostered his problems with authority; he was betrayed by former cohorts as a young hacker, which is why he doesn’t trust people. Yet the film needed to be sharper, not least in style. Random detail: Assange meets Berg’s parents, and is initially pleasant – but turns against them when he sees Berg’s dad being mean to Schmitt, the family cat. The way the scene is shot, it seems clear that Assange is reacting to animal cruelty – but it’s later suggested that what he really resents is Berg having taken his hacker name (‘Schmitt’) from a mere cat. Had this detail been clearly presented it might’ve made a scathing indictment of Assange, a human-rights activist whose real motive is vanity. But in fact it’s muddled, and thuds without doing any real damage.
Not that I needed an indictment of Assange per se; but The Fifth Estate lacks a clear focus. One woman calls his methods Orwellian, another says the opposite (she’s German, and contrasts him with the horrors of the old East Germany). “I don’t know which of us History is going to judge more harshly,” sighs Linney – and it’s true, we don’t know, but maybe Hollywood should’ve waited a few years before trying to make such a topical story. (Then again, The Social Network has created a niche for this kind of flashy techno-drama.) Assange meant well, the film concludes, “but then he made it all about himself”; nonetheless, “the tyrants of the world should beware!”. A bit of this and a bit of that, in other words – but it’s still enjoyable, if only in fleshing out one of the defining events (and trickiest debates) of the 21st century. Yes, Virginia, that was indeed a true story.
DIRECTED BY Bill Condon
STARRING Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, David Thewlis
US 2013 128 mins
