Julian Assange. Really? That’s our best hope for the the defence of the idea of an open society against the tyranny of state secrecy? A mendacious, manipulative, paranoid narcissist; a man who dyes his hair to seem more interesting and then lies about it. Serially. Or maybe his side–kick Daniel Berg, a wide–eyed ingénu with a beard of terrifying precision, who just wants to make the world a better, safer place. Is this what we have come to?
Multi–razzie winning director Bill Condon moves on from wrapping up the TWILIGHT franchise to delivering this muddle: not quite a condemnation of modern diplomacy, politics and journalism, THE FIFTH ESTATE is 128 minutes of po–faced self–importance derived from Berg’s book, amongst other sources. We may have reached one limit to what Benedict Cumberbatch can do. Which is interesting all by itself; it was beginning to look as if there weren’t any.
There is so much more to this story than two geeks playing at super secret agents.
FIFTH ESTATE struggles with the problem that all films addressing recent history face: we know. We know what happens. In fact, we know a lot more than is shown on the screen. And the film–makers know we know. It’s hard to create satisfying drama under those circumstances. One approach used often by Condon here is to drop into daydream sequences which depict a sort of sub–BRAZIL, sub–MATRIX infinitely receding fantasy news room where Julian (Cumberbatch) and Daniel (Daniel Brühl) can carry out various bits of interpretive dance to try and generate an air of mystery and importance. Usually, this is because Daniel has made a discovery (abundantly telegraphed to the audience; he does seem a bit thick sometimes), or perhaps he is trying to process another of Julian’s lies. But there is so much more to this story than two geeks playing at super secret agents. The big scoop is, of course, the material leaked by Manning: a fascinating character with a complicated story who gets little more than a fuzzy headshot and a silhoutte. The film focusses on the wrangling over whether or not to redact from that material, identifying information that will get people killed, which is important but isn’t enough to hang a story on; whereas Manning’s life definitely is. We can all look forward to that film.
Daniel has to juggle his responsibilities to WikiLeaks with his on-off relationship with Anke Domscheit (Alicia Vikander). She’s a very interesting woman in her own right, and at about the time that WikiLeaks were publishing the Afghan and Iraq war materials, she was winning a prize for her long standing contribution to the political and economic advancement of women in Germany and around the world. Condon has the character cavorting about in red hold–ups and getting sulky when Daniel would rather run off and save the world via laptop. Which she might just possibly have done – who knows – but where is that other stuff? The character on screen is dull even by the usual standards of mandatory love interest filler.
Women are generally absent from this derring–do tale of boys being boys, which can’t be right. There is an inter title during the coda to the film which mentions in passing that Assange is now, as we all know, an international fugitive wanted on suspicion of committing multiple sex crimes. Only he and the women involved know the truth about that, and whatever we may think about the fishiness of those charges being revived when once they were dropped, Assange remains a man who refuses to face justice on the question. But in FIFTH ESTATE Assange is rarely in the same room as a woman, and never under circumstances that could lead even to a mistaken accusation of sexual assault. So how does that work?
Where FIFTH ESTATE really struggles is the cuts between the desperate, disorganised paranoid rush of Assange’s peripatetic life, the slick, high–touch technocratic world of the US State Department (the screenwriter, Josh Singer, worked on THE WEST WING) and what looks very much to be the actual offices of The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times. Each feels like the strange intrusion of a completely different film, and you’re just settling in when the next ill–timed crashing of mental gears comes along. Some of the characters in those other episodes are much more rounded, more engaging, more interesting than either Julian or Daniel. And, one suspects, more made–up. And this is where Cumberbatch comes a cropper.
[Assange] is, in his own favourite invective, a wanker. A nasty wanker.
By most accounts of people who have met him in life, Assange is a very strange and off–putting individual. There’s a near throwaway line in FIFTH ESTATE where he claims that some say he may be on the autistic spectrum. In life, Assange may very well be: it would explain a lot. But on screen Julian isn’t a well meaning but befuddled aspie trying to navigate the whirling maze of neurotypical bullshit. He is, in his own favourite invective, a wanker. A nasty wanker. A nasty, unappealing, pig–headed, abusive wanker. And that turns out to be a little bit outside Cumberbatch’s range because he can do the snarling and shouting, and he can do the disarmingly awkward public speaking, and he can do the winning rays of principled light that shine through from time to time, but he can’t quite turn his charisma down far enough while doing all those things.
The title of FIFTH ESTATE comes from a little speech that’s put in the mouth of Nick Davies (David Thewlis). He ascribes the origin of the British “Fourth Estate”, in Carlyle’s sense, to those men who had the temerity to dare to publish a record of the debates in Parliament, and were hanged for it. Did such hangings ever occur? Seems not, although it’s true that reporting the debates in Parliament was once quite a radical act. In his story, WikiLeaks has become a “fifth estate”. That’s the kind of self–aggrandising guff that a Julian Assange would make up.
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