It was only
a matter of time before the films about Wikileaks started pouring out of the
production companies I suppose. Julian Assange`s Wikileaks is one of the
greatest and most extraordinary information phenomena of modern time. Assange
has exposed more corruption and human rights violations than any other media
outlet in existence today thanks to his technical skill, his tenacity and
determination to get the information ``out there``. In reach for all of us.
But , as
this film points out, does that mean he is perfect? Does that mean he has no
demons of his own to fight? Does it mean the whole process was easy? The Fifth
Estate would argue not. Benedict Cumberbach plays Assange and Daniel Bruhl
plays Daniel ??? the two men who basically kicked off the global phenomenon.
Daniel gets by and large swept up by Julian`s charisma and the strength of his
ideas. He is a very able IT technician with bright ideas and connections to
back them up. Julian is, of course, the main driving force behind the whole
operation, the one with the inspiration, but well… How to put this…
Organization is not exactly his strong point, which is basically where Daniel
comes in. Staging an online revolution does, however, come at a cost. Julian has
sacrificed anything and everything that ties him even remotely to an ordinary
life to get the online revolution going. And as Wikileaks takes its first
strides across the information super highway, Daniel is faced with the same
choices... Is he prepared to make all the sacrifices Julian made? Or would that
be going a step too far?
I imagine
quite a few of us were aware that this film was a complete failure at the box
office. It was partly why I was intrigued enough to watch it in the first
place. I mean with a current and charismatic topic like Wikileaks and Julian
Assange and acting greats like Benedict Cumbarbach and Daniel Bruhl, one would
assume the film was set to be a massive success. It just goes to show (as if we
weren`t aware of it) that the way you handle a story is just as important as
the material itself – especially when using visual mediums like film (or indeed
theatre). Now the portrayal of Julian Assange is one thing. We do get to know
him quite well, and as some of you may have heard, what we see is not exactly complimentary.
He is selfish when he comes to his relationships with everyone else, with his
mind only on Wikileaks and himself. He has very little consideration, or in
fact patience for any idea or happening not pertaining to himself or the cause,
and even ``pertinent`` concerns are dismissed if they are not directly in line
with his way of thinking. I have no idea if this rather selfish portrayal of
the man is entirely accurate but it does make sense in the sense that you have
to be more than a little extraordinary to come up with an idea like Wikileaks
and this, combined with past traumas, might well make you, well… A little too
extraordinary. And herein lies the problem with the film. The only other
character we really get to know is Daniel. But apart from these two, the entire
pantheon of characters could well be made up of cardboard cut-outs. Of course a
film cannot have more than a certain number of protagonists and secondary
characters but I strongly feel having two main protagonists accompanied by what
largely amounts to a rather over-populated Greek chorus does nothing to advance
the film. And, I am sad to say this, but as far as character development goes,
in the sense that often in films we find the main character(s) changed and
developed in some way at the end of the story, the author also leaves us
hanging. Julian Assange is basically the same as he ever was – all be it with a
much stronger voice on the internet now – Daniel has developed slightly but
only in that he no longer hero-worships Julian and has decided that he cannot
sacrifice every single vestige of what he cares for, for this cause. The rest
of the cast we barely get to know so we cannot really comment on. The rather
disconcerting result is that the film reads a bit like a documentary played out
by pre-formed ``types`` of Hollywood` s Golden Age. And while the documentary-like
approach to the film was unavoidable given the nature of the subject and how
recently the events portrayed took place, that is no excuse for the shallowness
of the characters we see on the screen. I mean, even in the case of Julian
Assange, the most developed character in the film, it doesn`t take an expert to
see that Cumberbach has basically been asked to take his famous Sherlock Holmes
character and adapt it to the world of IT. This is not to say that Cumberbach
does a bad job of it, only that with an actor of his caliber one could have
asked him to do something slightly more adventurous and different… That is,
after all, a large part of the ethos of Wikileaks.
The one
thing I thought the film did do rather well on was the way they portrayed the
online world, the internet itself. I was watching a video in the exact same matter quite recently (check it out HERE) and it was basically talking about the new search in
films today as to how best one should portray online transactions on film. Various
experiments have been made pertaining to telephone messages and although we do have variations, critics
seem pretty unanimous in naming the style as used in the BBC`s Sherlock (where the messages usually free-float across
the screen in proximity to whoever received it, in a font similar to the one
used on our phones) is the style to keep to. The internet however, and chatting
is yet to find its on screen avatar. I am not going to indulge myself with
lengthy descriptions and let you guys discover the whole deal yourselves but I
will just say that I like it. I am not sure it will end up as the definitively
accepted ``thing`` (I mean, as ``definitively accepted`` as these things get)
but I definitely think it`s on the right track.
In short, I
was rather disappointed with The Fifth Estate. My only consolation is, I am
sure other films with different and better interpretations of the topic are
bound to surface as this is one historical phenomenon no one is about to forget
in a hurry. Shame one can`t say the same about the film.
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