FILM REVIEW The Fifth Estate

DECENT PERFORMANCES?Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl star in ‘The Fifth Estate’.

Weak lens on WikiLeaks


Fergal Rock

Directed by Bill Condon (‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn’) and adapted from Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book (‘Inside WikiLeaks’), by screenwriter Josh Singer (‘Television’s Fringe’), ‘The Fifth Estate’ chronicles the WikiLeaks cables controversy and the disintergration of Domscheit-Berg’s working relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Starring the in-demand Benedict Cumberbatch (‘Sherlock’) as a suitably oily Assange and Daniel Brühl (‘Rush’) as the morally rigorous Domscheit-Berg, the film spans half a decade whilst crossing more timezones than your average Jason Bourne movie.
Despite decent performances, however, Condon’s film lacks the required bite and swagger of say David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ or the taut drama of Kevin McDonald’s ‘State of Play’, and the film – much like its portrayal of Assange – suffers from a lack of clear purpose and depth.
For the uninitiated, WikiLeaks, established by Julian Assange, is a non-profit website dedicated to the publication of secret information and the protection of the anonymous whistleblowers who supply it. In July 2010, WikiLeaks became a globaly recognised force when it united with The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel newspapers to publish encrypted war logs from the Afghan War. ‘The Fifth Estate’ opens on the eve of this publication before leaping back in time to Domscheit-Berg’s first fateful meeting with Assange. What follows is framed largely from Domscheit-Berg’s perspective.
Though the film has been heavily criticised by Assange, this is far from a hatchet job. The Australian is neither painted as hero nor villain but rather something altogether more complex.
It is disappointing then that Condon and screenwriter Josh Singer fail to unravel these complexities beyond surface quirks. To a degree this is understandable. Clearly Assange is an enigma even to those closest to him. He is a veil of secrets, an emotional firewall, and even though the film is built on his relationship with Domscheit-Berg, we never get the sense that they were friends.
Certainly, Domscheit-Berg looks up to Assange; respects and admires his beliefs. The film, however, never truly succeeds in showing us Assange as Domscheit-Berg sees him. Ultimately, this is its biggest problem.
We don’t need to know who Assange is for the film to work, but we do need to know Domscheit-Berg. He is our way into this story, our eyes and ears, but the film never gets under his skin, and bizarrely, given ‘The Fifth Estate’ is based on his book, he comes across as something of a construct, a portal into Assange’s universe with no interior life of his own.  
Dramatising something so inherently computer-based was always going to be difficult, but even at that, the film’s visual metaphors feel horribly dated. The publication of the WikiLeaks cables is, we are repeatedly told, on a par with the Pentagon Papers leak in the ‘70s, yet the importance of the event is never truly illustrated on screen. Nor is the implied threat to Assange and Domscheit-Berg’s safety.
Secret Service types appear in bars, elaborate escapes are hatched, but little drama is mined from these moments. A detour to Libya featuring Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci ups the stakes, but these characters feel like they’ve strayed in from another film.
The WikiLeaks cables leak is clearly a complex issue, one which has been largely overshadowed by Assange’s cult of personality. Perhaps the information war would have been better served had it been structured more like ‘Traffic’, Steven Soderbegh’s all-encompassing war-on-drugs film from 2000. In the closing moments of ‘The Fifth Estate’,  we are told that most good stories start at the beginning. That this film starts at the end is, in hindsight then, somewhat telling.

Rating 5 out of 10