Wednesday, November 20, 2013

"Based on a True Story," Part 2

The Fifth Estate

Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion.
                                                                                          Julian Assange

Journalists refer to the media as “the fourth estate,” since they presumably serve as a check on the integrity of the three branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial. But it is apparent—as shown by the propaganda buildup to the invasion of Iraq—that the corporate media serve primarily as “stenographers to power,” passing along without evaluation false statements from politicians and passively maintaining state censorship. Julian Assange proposed that, since the “fourth estate” wasn't doing its job, a “fifth estate” was needed to expose important information withheld from the public by governmental and corporate censorship.


I went to this film with low expectations. It is based on two books hostile to Assange. Inside Wiki-Leaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website, by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, is the memoirs of the former Wiki-Leaks volunteer who became Assange's second-in-command, and whose falling out with Assange supplies the personal drama of the film. Wiki-Leaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, is by David Leigh and Luke Harding, two Guardian reporters whose newspaper prospered when it released information obtained by Wiki-Leaks, but who later broke with him for the same reason as Domscheit-Berg. They contend that Assange was reckless in releasing unredacted versions of documents leaked by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning. With these two books lined up against him, it is not surprising that Assange assumed the worst and refused to cooperate with actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays him in the film. (The quote above is from Assange's letter to Cumberbatch, which deserves to be read in its entirety.) The fact that the film was produced by Dreamworks, a division of the Disney corporation, was hardly reassuring.


I went into the film with two concerns. First, I was afraid it would turn into a character assassination of Julian Assange, which would turn the audience against him and distract from the substantive issues raised by Wiki-Leaks. Secondly, when debating whether governments should be allowed to keep vast numbers of classified documents, including evidence of war crimes, secret from the public, I was afraid the film would come down firmly on the side of the US government.

My first concern was not entirely justified. Assange is portrayed as an eccentric, but his character is sympathetic in many ways. Benedict Cumberbatch has an uncanny resemblance to Assange, an accomplished Aussie accent, and brings real complexity to the role. He deserves an Oscar nomination, although he probably won't get it. Daniel Bruhl, fresh from his role as Formula-1 driver Niki Lauda in Rush, provides stalwart support as the dedicated introvert, Domscheit-Berg. The film is at its best when conveying the excitement of Wikileaks' early successes in releasing a variety of secrets, such as the records of the Swiss bank Julius Baer, than embarrassed and sometimes incriminated corporations and governments.

Cumberbatch presents Assange as so completely driven by his mission of transparency that he is insensitive to the feelings of those around him. This is dramatized, for example, in a painful scene in which he insults Domscheit-Berg's well-meaning parents when they invite him to dinner. At one point, Assange diagnoses himself as falling “somewhere along the autism spectrum,” which seems like a reasonable possibility. The film goes off the deep end, however, when it speculates about childhood origins of his behavior. The film rightly ignores recent allegations of sexual misconduct made against Assange.

Assange is shown to be concerned about the safety of his whistleblowers. In a foreshadowing of the film's central theme, two Kenyan men whose expose of their government's corruption was released by Wiki-Leaks are murdered. Assange is extremely upset despite the fact that the men chose to sign their names to the document. This dramatic scene sets up an expectation in the audience that when Wiki-Leaks releases documents, people are going to be killed. There is some danger that the audience may conflate this incident with later events.

The central dilemma of the film is the disagreement between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, The Guardian, and the US government over the costs and benefits of releasing the Manning files. The government painted a dire picture of their potential impact, arguing that the lives of American troops and informants working undercover for the US would be endangered. Assange refers to this as a “canard” that has been used for over 50 years to justify government secrecy. He counters by saying that the release of the documents could do significant good. They reveal evidence of US war crimes, such as the infamous “Collateral Murder” video showing the aerial killing of innocent civilians in Iraq, and the “Afghan War Logs,” documenting the extent of civilian deaths in that country. Assange argues that these revelations might ultimately save lives, since governments might hesitiate to behave so heinously if they knew such incidents might become public knowledge.

To the film's credit, both sides are given opportunities to state their case. (The government is represented by Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as two anonymous CIA or State Department operatives.) The central question then becomes: Are the arguments presented fairly, or is the playing field tilted to favor one side? This is a subjective judgment, no doubt influenced by my general agreement with Assange. I think the script subtly favors the government position.

The film dramatizes the danger to US agents by creating the composite character of a Libyan spy working undercover to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Of all US undercover operations around the world, this is one that might have had the most public approval. Both the character and his American handler (Linney) are presented sympathetically. Early in the film, he is offered a chance to come to America, but he chooses to remain in Tripoli, since it is his home. Later in the film, when it's known that Assange may release the documents, he and his family are forced to leave Libya on short notice.  This leads to a mini-thriller as they pass through a border checkpoint.

The people Assange claims might be helped by the release of the Manning files are largely abstract subjects of dialogue. The "Collateral Murder" footage (featured prominently in the official trailer) is the only case in which American wrongdoing is shown. How different would this film have been if one of its recurrent themes had been a dramatization of the fate of an Afghan village in which civilians were killed by American bombing?

It was revealed at Bradley Manning's trial by retired Gen. Robert Carr, head of the $6.2 million, 125-person Information Release Task Force, that the government was not aware of any American or foreign national who had been harmed by the release of the documents. (There was some talk of an Afghan man who was killed, but he was not mentioned in the Manning files.) The film makes this point, but it is presented as a claim made by Assange rather than an admission by the government, which may lead the audience to discount it.

I think the film subtly lowers the bar for what potential consequences might justify censorship. Unable to present evidence of anyone having been killed or injured, the filmmakers seem to argue that Wiki-Leaks should not have published the papers if there was a chance that someone, such as a semi-fictitious Libyan informant, might be seriously inconvenienced by their release.

What counts as a “harm” serious enough to send Manning—and potentially, Assange—to jail for decades for releasing classified documents? Why should they be sent to jail, while the perpetrators of the rampant torture and assassination they revealed go free? The Fifth Estate raises these questions, but in order to give an informed answer, you have to seek out more than is revealed in this film.

You may also be interested in reading:

"Based on a True Story," Part 1

Zero Thirty Darkness

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