The Fifth Estate (15.)
Directed by Bill Condon.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, David Thewlis, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, Dan Stevens, and Peter Capaldi. 124 mins.
This is the second biopic about a light haired troublemaker in a month. While Naomi Watts claimed Diana approved her casting from beyond the grave, Cumberbatch admitted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had phoned him begging not to go through with it. He may have had a point.
He looks like an albino Kevin the Teenager, and when he first speaks his voice seems all wrong. Quite quickly though the various aspects of his impersonation fall into place but it doesn’t become anything more than an impersonation, possibly because Assange may not be much of a character, more a collection of anti-social personality traits.
The narrative hook is the relationship between Assange and his loyal helper Daniel Domschiet-Berg, (whose book the script is partly based on) and the line it is pushing is that though its founder had its flaws, Wikileaks was ultimately a force for good. Odd that a film about such a driven and uncompromising radical should be so relentlessly even handed. It’s nice about every one – the other activists, the Guardian journalist, the American diplomats (represented by Linney and Tucci) and Assange himself, trying to explain his character flaws with biographical snippets about his troubled childhood crammed into the dialogue. The film even gives him the last word.
When the film opens with a montage of the news media down the ages, starting with Egyptian hieroglyphics, you get the first indication that it is desperately reaching, trying to find something to peg its story of men in room on computers to. Condon tries a few visual flourishes such as an imaginary office full of empty desks to visualise Assange lies about Wikileaks being a giant collective of activists when it was just him. There is also an image of him standing in the ashes towards the end. Mostly it is made up of people frantically taping away at laptop keyboards.
Assange’s complaint against this film (and the documentary We Steal Secrets) would be that by personalising it as his story they are part of a very subtle cover up, that even though America can’t hide all top secret information they can effectively deflect attention from it, trivialise it. Perhaps though it isn’t about Assange flawed personality but his flawed ideals. The free flow of information has just debased the value of that information. The Wikileaks revelations didn’t ultimately shake the world; they just added another layer of disillusion. The democratising of information has seemingly left us even more powerless than before.
Also I was a little surprised that the Guardian journalists featured in the film, including editor Alan Rushbridger are played by professional actors. Surely on principle Rushbridger should have insisted that Citizen Thespian do the roles unpaid.
Directed by Bill Condon.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, David Thewlis, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, Dan Stevens, and Peter Capaldi. 124 mins.
This is the second biopic about a light haired troublemaker in a month. While Naomi Watts claimed Diana approved her casting from beyond the grave, Cumberbatch admitted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had phoned him begging not to go through with it. He may have had a point.
He looks like an albino Kevin the Teenager, and when he first speaks his voice seems all wrong. Quite quickly though the various aspects of his impersonation fall into place but it doesn’t become anything more than an impersonation, possibly because Assange may not be much of a character, more a collection of anti-social personality traits.
The narrative hook is the relationship between Assange and his loyal helper Daniel Domschiet-Berg, (whose book the script is partly based on) and the line it is pushing is that though its founder had its flaws, Wikileaks was ultimately a force for good. Odd that a film about such a driven and uncompromising radical should be so relentlessly even handed. It’s nice about every one – the other activists, the Guardian journalist, the American diplomats (represented by Linney and Tucci) and Assange himself, trying to explain his character flaws with biographical snippets about his troubled childhood crammed into the dialogue. The film even gives him the last word.
When the film opens with a montage of the news media down the ages, starting with Egyptian hieroglyphics, you get the first indication that it is desperately reaching, trying to find something to peg its story of men in room on computers to. Condon tries a few visual flourishes such as an imaginary office full of empty desks to visualise Assange lies about Wikileaks being a giant collective of activists when it was just him. There is also an image of him standing in the ashes towards the end. Mostly it is made up of people frantically taping away at laptop keyboards.
Assange’s complaint against this film (and the documentary We Steal Secrets) would be that by personalising it as his story they are part of a very subtle cover up, that even though America can’t hide all top secret information they can effectively deflect attention from it, trivialise it. Perhaps though it isn’t about Assange flawed personality but his flawed ideals. The free flow of information has just debased the value of that information. The Wikileaks revelations didn’t ultimately shake the world; they just added another layer of disillusion. The democratising of information has seemingly left us even more powerless than before.
Also I was a little surprised that the Guardian journalists featured in the film, including editor Alan Rushbridger are played by professional actors. Surely on principle Rushbridger should have insisted that Citizen Thespian do the roles unpaid.
