Plot
Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) has spent his life hunting for the truth. A master hacker and programmer, he creates the website Wikileaks where whistleblowers can safely and anonymously post delicate information. After enlisting the help of Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl), Assange embarks on a quest to turn his site from a shoestring small-scale irk, to worldwide fire starter.
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| Sherlock and Niki Lauda (and the other dude) chill with Melisandre in her down time. |
Review
Let’s just get this out of the way: The Fifth Estate is likely biased. It’s based on 2 books written by people who aren’t exactly Assange-inclined, so…yeah. That’s that, we all good? Let’s move on.
The Fifth Estate (noun) is, unsurprisingly, anything that exists outside of the other four estates: the clergy, the nobility, the commoners and the press. It’s most commonly used to refer to the digital world. And The Fifth Estate (film) doesn’t half like banging on about it. Not explicitly mind you, more in the vein of The Social Network and other films populated with tech-savvy young men gushing well articulated reams of jargon to the tune of breathless keyboard clacking.
So there you go. If image after image of computer screens filled with matrix-like torrents of tiny tiny writing are your thing, The Fifth Estate is all you’ll need and then some. And if not…well, at least they try to jazz it up with fancy lightshows, visual metaphors galore and funky tunes.
Try however, is the key word here. As in “I tried to bake a cake, but stopped paying attention so here are your lovely coal balls.” There’s a snazzy credits sequence, a whole lot of graphical fanciness, pointless text-message projection and general superfluous neon subtitling. It’s all just a tad self-indulgent, like the film was aware of how dull it might be and made a minimal effort to be ‘cool’. Unfortunately, it’s all simply too disingenuous, not to mention terribly integrated, to even begin working.
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| FEEL THE ENERGYYYY |
Bottom line, regardless of the source material, a film based on the relentlessly dreary and boringly unpleasant character of Assange was never going to be an easy sell. To his credit, Cumberbatch does a decent job (grating accent aside) though not even his bountiful talent can mask that fact that Assange simply isn’t an endearing or particularly interesting screen presence. Assange is generally – needlessly – childish and ultimately irritating. He feels far too constructed, like Cumberbatch was all too painfully aware that he was acting; the ‘discreet’ wanker signal sequence is baffling in its unnecessary and awkward lameness.
The screenplay is no less clunky either. Or maybe ‘simply inadequate’ would make a fairer assessment. Dialogue wise, we’ve got vacuous platitudes galore and possibly the worst simile ever committed to paper: ‘Pacing backwards and forwards like a demented bee?’ Seriously? That’s the best a (presumably) well-paid Hollywood professional can cough up? Can you even imagine a bee pacing? Oh dear.
The random excursions in to Assange’s past are poorly handed as well. Clumsy at best, comically pointless at worst. Like Assange’s character, there’s nothing organic to them, it’s like some hidden egg-timer has gone off and the film suddenly remembers ‘oh yeah, let’s have another crack at making Assange sympathisable because of reasons.’
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| It's like...a projection of his mind or something. Deep, dude. |
Fortunately, Brühl’s Berg cuts a far more appealing figure, even if the role is as substantial as day-old dish water. What little drama there is simply doesn’t work because the characters feel like they barely exist, as though they’re still just amalgamated constructions of letters and words and not anything more substantial or human. Breakups and relationship drama will never be convincing if said relationship is weightless (Ref: Berg and his mystery girlfriend) and nowhere is this better demonstrated than with the central pairing of Assange and Berg. There’s no history presented, no effort to show why or how they’re friends and so there’s simply no motivation to care. It’s just a thing that happens. The early rooftop scene between them is forced and constipated with shabby emotional impetus, the crowning glory of a uniformly inept film.
Again, this isn’t to say The Fifth Estate is poorly performed; in fact its sturdy cast is its best element. That they managed to wrangle the performances they did out of such shoddy material is remarkable. Outside of the chief duo, there’s a fantastic supporting cast to behold – including acting heavyweights like Laura Linney, Peter Capaldi and Stanley Tucci – but…where the hell are they? It’s a blink and you’ll miss it sort of deal, roles ripe with real dramatic allure bastardized by an amateurish script.
Ultimately, the problem when everything of note – all of the ‘action’ and the greater chunk of the drama – takes place on a computer screen is that it all feels as lank and lifeless as Assange’s hair. There’s quite literally no agency. The most exciting things get is watching two men clack at each other on keyboards with increasing limp ferocity. It’d be like watching two elderly ducks squabbling over a piece of bread in the pond, neither of them actually want it, they just don’t want to the other one to have it, and all the while they’re wondering where their life went.
Now there’s a f*****g simile.
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| The face that launched a thousand ships. |
Verdict
The Fifth Estate is a film defined by its sturdy cast and watery narrative. Broadly tracking the relationship between Assange and Berg, it never gives enough to make you to truly care. The bafflingly edited ending sums it up nicely: confusing in its clumsiness, self-aggrandising in its execution.
2/5
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