Clicky

THE FIFTH ESTATE – The Review – We Are Movie Geeks

General News

THE FIFTH ESTATE – The Review

By  | 

5thestate

It’s been only a week since CAPTAIN PHILLIPS headed right from the news into the multiplexes. Well it’s already time for another big studio, ripped-from-the-headlines docudrama. Most of the action takes place in 2009 as did CP, but the people in our new film are still making news while the hijacking wrapped up in a few days. THE FIFTH ESTATE is an ongoing, still unfolding story because it concerns the website Wikileaks and it’s still controversial founder. Its title refers to the news media. The fourth estate was another term for the press: newspapers, books, and magazines. The new estate is in cyberspace, the websites that can send information everywhere in almost the blink of an eye. Yes we’re in much of the same territory as the 2010 film THE SOCIAL NETWORK. But the stakes are much higher here than the lawsuits and broken friendships of that look at Facebook. People are at real physical risk in this new film from director Bill Condon. But is he able to navigate the technical and ethical labyrinths of this new media and present a compelling bit of cinema?

The main witness to these Earth-shaking events is Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl), a computer whiz at a German corporation. He’s fascinated by tales of the corruption busting website Wikileaks. At a local tech conference he meets that site’s enigmatic creator Julian Assange (Benedict Camberbatch). Soon Daniel is recruited by Julian to help expand the site which offers a safe haven to anonymous whistle-blowers exposing crime and corruption. Wikileaks helps bring down a crooked European bank and shines a light on the corrupt regime in Kenya. The site soon attracts the attention of the stodgy newspapers and undercover agents who attempt to stop Julian and his aides. This is just a warm up to the big story. A US soldier, Bradley Manning, gives Julian access to thousands of confidential US Air Force files, emails, and videos. This puts Daniel and Julian at odds. Julian wishes to release everything unedited which will expose several undercover operatives and put them in jeopardy. But Daniel believes that this move is not worth the cost of countless lives.

Although not the most famous protagonist of this tale, Bruhl anchors the film as the determined and often frustrated Berg. Much of the same intensity that Bruhl displayed in RUSH as the focused Niki Lauda is called upon for his portrait as Wikileaks number two (who often feels as if he’s treated as…er…number two). We can see his idealistic dream disintegrate in his eyes. The much showier, flamboyant role is that of front man Assange played with great energy by the always fascinating Camberbatch. Under the almost glowing white hair, this tech savant almost becomes a messiah of transparency. But soon his all too human side reveals itself. This film’s Assange is obliviously single-minded and grandly egotistical, almost a cyber Charles Foster Kane. He’s part pied piper and part Elmer Gantry gathering his wide-eyed young flock. David Thewlis has a juicy supporting role as the hardened newspaper reported that’s skeptical of this internet glory-hound , but more than a bit envious of his freedom from skittish editors and publishers (and their armies of lawyers). Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney play standard US state department buerocrats trying to stay ahead of the damaging leaks. The actors have done these management many times before and seem to function here as token Americans, put in the film so it won’t feel so foreign.

Condon does his best to make the internet more cinematic, but the results are too often contrived and clumsy. The world-wide web is often shown as endless rows of desks looking like the decaying sets from Billy Wilder’s classic THE APARTMENT. When Berg shuts down the site we get slo-mo shots of him tumping over desks and smashing neon tube lights with his laptop as he is showered with sparks like an 80’s music video. Seeing their reflections in the monitors just can’t make the endless typing edgy. Neither do constant shots of shady, clean-cuts hulks in suits lurking in the backgrounds of every corner of Europe observing the tech heroes. The fatal problem with the film is the lack of real motivation of the principals. Why does Berg feel compelled to give up everything for this cause? We gets some brief flashbacks of Assange as a boy with his mother in an Aussie hippie cult, but it doesn’t really explain his desire for publicity as a crusader, And the epilogue with him addressing an unseen interviewer about this film comes off as forced and awkward. This evolving story could one day make for an involving docudrama. Unfortunately THE FIFTH ESTATE, despite some of our best artists and a gifted director, is a confusing, over-ambitious mish-mash, a dramatic systems crash.

3 Out of 5

5thestateposter

Jim Batts was a contestant on the movie edition of TV's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in 2009 and has been a member of the St. Louis Film Critics organization since 2013.