Review: The Fifth Estate (Dir: Bill Condon) at the Electric Cinema

A cup of decaff after getting home.

 

 

The Electric Cinema, as many Brummies know, is a beautifully-restored picture house in the centre of town, with the much-recommended features of sofas and a licensed bar.  (I am told that you can summon drinks to your seat by text, combining these elements in a way your local Cineplex wouldn’t even dream of).

It was the perfect venue to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s latest film, chronicling the rise of Wikileaks and its charismatic head, Julian Assange.  I say this because the Electric Cinema represents an affectionate representation of what is best of the past, whilst sitting comfortably next to the impressive edifice of the transformed New Street Station.  Waiting outside the screen with a bottle of Purity Ale, one feels a warm sense that the best of traditional and modern can indeed exist cheek by jowl.

The Fifth Estate, however, represents a sharp contrast to this – attempting (in this reviewer’s opinion, unsuccessfully) to bring the style of the classic 70s conspiracy thriller to a very modern story, still very much on the front pages (and Twitter feeds).   The story covers the origins of Wikileaks, through to the seismic events around the releasing of the war logs and diplomatic cables in 2010.  The story is told mainly through the relationship between Cumberbatch’s Julian Assange and Daniel Brühl’s activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who became a spokesperson for Wikileaks.  Assange is shown as a messianic, driven figure, convinced of the righteousness of his cause, with Berg as a somewhat star-struck acolyte.

The film starts promisingly, showing us how web activists had a much clearer view of the realities of the flow of information in the internet era than did traditional journalists, bankers and the legal profession.  However, Condon then attempts to frame the narrative in terms of classic conspiracy movies such as (naturally) All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor (full disclosure: a personal favourite) and the film starts to drift.  Cliché follows cliché as we see Assange and Berg rushing around train stations to evade non-existent pursuers and screaming “shut it down!” at computer programs the purpose of which the viewer doesn’t know.  During the showing, the Electric cinema descended into giggles on more than one occasion as the (computer genius) characters did absurd technical things – such as merrily entering an internet chat room on an aeroplane.   

There is a romantic subplot that seems to serve no purpose and slows the narrative down (the film has an-it-feels-even-longer running time of 128 minutes) and whilst we are given glimpses of the childhood traumas that may have made Assange the way he is, his secretive nature means we are never sure what to believe about the man at the centre of the greatest leak of secrets in history.

The film is by no means all bad, the performances are good throughout, and Cumberbatch does well to put over the magnetism and drive of a man who otherwise might appear merely cruel and narcissistic.  Laura Linney also is a high point, playing a mid-ranking US diplomat, and showing, amongst other vignettes, the impact of Wikileaks’ activities, reminding the viewer that the work of these activists have huge repercussions in the real world.

Ultimately, however, this reviewer was left feeling that this was a missed opportunity, with the decision to market the film as a techno-thriller and ‘sort-of-portrait of Assage’  acting perhaps to hobble the much more interesting story about information flows in the 21^st century, and making it more about individuals and personalities.

 

The cinema was great, though!