You could be
forgiven, after watching the opening sequence of this film, that you’re
watching the beginning of some James Bond knockoff. But is Julian Assange
(Benedict Cumberbatch), founder of WikiLeaks, James Bond or the villain of the
story? Or both?
Assange burst into
prominence with news that WikiLeaks had obtained the classified information,
including hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables, provided by Army
intelligence analyst Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning in 2010. This story begins
there, but flashes back two years to Assange’s meeting at a Berlin conference
with Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl, of Rush),
a German hacker who, in this version, anyway, becomes lured by Assange’s talk
of righting wrongs as well as his own story, difficult childhood and all, some
of which is true. Pretty soon, the two of them, with just a little help, are
spreading news of assassination plots and banking law violations.
Since Berg’s book is
one of the sources for the movie, it’s natural that the movie makes Berg the hero
of the story, perhaps Assange’s right-hand man, perhaps the victim of his
manipulations, like a battered wife. He’s the ordinary guy/audience stand-in contrasted
with the charismatic Assange, whose self-satisfaction possibly covers deep
self-doubt. Cumberbatch, who also plays
the title role in the BBC’s modernized Sherlock
series, knows something about playing smug, and he’s memorable in the role.
Director Bill
Condon’s (The Twilight Saga) attempt
to give this the look and feel of a techno thriller doesn’t disguise that fact
that it isn’t, save perhaps in the last half hour, and most of the shots of
computer screens don’t illuminate anything important about how WikiLeaks
worked. I wondered how David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, the team behind The Social Network, might have
approached this story.
A question the film
presents, but does not address, is whether we should treat people like Assange
as journalists; and, secondarily, does Wikileaks and its online cousins
represent a new paradigm for information transfer that governments and organizations
will need to adjust to regardless of what the law can do? These questions go
beyond the story of Assange, whose ultimate fate remains unclear. The movie does a competent job of presenting that story, despite its annoyingly slick beginning. But it won’t stick with you.
viewed 10/9/13 7:30 at Ritz East [PFS screening]
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