The Fifth Estate normally refers to the alternative media
that consists of online journalists and bloggers as an alternative to the mainstream
press.
This fictionalised recreation of events surrounding the
whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks and its founder and editor in chief Julian
Assange is a drama for the digital age. Based on the memoirs[1] of
Daniel Domscheit-Berg a German technology activist who was until September 2010
Assange’s right hand man and the WikiLeaks spokesperson. Perhaps not quite the
character assassination carried out in Alex Gidney’s overlong documentary We
Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013) but still not the complete
story of this intricate character that appears to have dedicated his whole life
to exposing incriminating secrets. The sexual accusations levelled at Assange
are skimmed over, as are his upbringing in a sect, and the existence of a son,
Daniel, and a daughter born in 2006. The films narrative concentrates on his
thorny partnership with Domscheit-Berg.
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| Julian Assange. |
The best thing about The Fifth Estate (2013) is it gives
a platform to exhibit the acting skill of Benedict Cumberbatch in playing the
part of autocratic Assange which he gets just right, ‘the voice and the slightly jerky, stiff, awkward demeanor,’[2] all matching perfectly what we have seen on our TV screens
while he has been holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. But I can’t help but
opining that Bill Condon may not have been the right director for this overtly
political drama with an oeuvre that has included The Twilight Saga’s 1 and 2 and the musical drama Dreamgirls (2006)! There’s still a
better film out there somewhere!
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