Review of The Fifth Estate (2013) by Michael B — 06 Sep 2013

TIFF 2013: The Fifth Estate.

Superbly acted, yet more interested in the shortcomings of Assange than those of a secretive superpower.

The first major feature about Wikileaks endeavours to to portray the organization as intrepid for its work in exposing state and corporate wrongdoings, while painting its founder Julian Assange as more a mercurial narcissist than an idealistic activist.

As one might expect from a major Hollywood studio, the film treads softly around the most damning revelations which exposed US deceptions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan casualties and questionable war tactics, and instead seems to care more about the discomfort the leak of internal State Department cables had on its ability to conduct diplomacy in the aftermath.

The film also argues that Wikileaks played fast and loose with whistleblower safety as a result of Assange's untameable ego, yet gives barely any mention of the more serious assault on press and whistleblower freedoms that were being perpetrated by the Obama administration during the same period.

The person who actually put themself in jeopardy by leaking US secrets, Charlotte (Bradley) Manning is relegated to barely a mention, except to say that (s)he had a history of mental instability. There is also no mention of the almost certainly US government-led cyber attacks which attempted to crash Wikileaks when they released the US State Department logs. All told, the Fifth Estate takes great pains to soften the image of the US and its reasons for keeping so many secrets.

Having said all that, the acting in this film is superb, and the message of the importance of disseminating the secrets of our governments and corporate interests still resonates, even if it fails to look too inwardly at the actions of the world's lone superpower.