Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate takes an impressive cast (who doesn’t love Benedict Cumberbatch and Professor Lupin?) and combines it with one of the most controversial events in recent history to make one of the most ambitious dramas I’ve ever seen.
Told through the point of view of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a hated rival and prior co-worker of Julian Assange, The Fifth Estate takes a look at the tumultuous foundation of WikiLeaks. While watching the trailer may lead a potential viewer to believe this movie takes sides on this controversial topic, the film does so much more than that, and it does it with flare.
The movie begins in 2010 with the release of the Afghan war logs, but soon begins telling the story of the WikiLeaks’ founding through Domscheit-Berg’s eyes. While The Fifth Estate tackles a massive amount of events in its two hours and five minutes, the viewer doesn’t feel too jerked around. Granted, there are an excessive amount of fast-forward montages, but the acting performances of Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl make these sequences easy to ignore.
The two actors’ interpretations of Assange and Domscheit-Berg make up for what, at times, feels like artificial character development and flat relationships. Cumberbatch plays the role of Assange so confidently—as is needed for a character like Assange—that you feel like you’re actually looking into the emotional tribulations and intellectual articulations of the man himself. Brühl also does a good job of pulling you into the story, all while providing a counterbalance to Assange’s idealism.
The Fifth Estate paints a vivid picture of the stories of the documents they release, images of blood juxtaposed with truth, creepy music played in the background of acts of government brutality. Yet The Fifth Estate does more than just present these events as facts. Cumberbatch’s Assange argues that every conspiracy begins with two men and a secret.
This secret eventually weaves a web of lies and deceit that only can result in blood, but one righteous man decides he can bring it all to the ground. The Fifth Estate knows it’s playing with controversial topic, but it doesn’t get carried away with righteous sentiment. Rather, it simply begs the viewer to do something. In the drama of everything you watch, are you willing to find the truth, to challenge the mold? It would be so easy for the movie to lie to us—as real-life Julian Assange claims the film does—but by dramatizing events, director Bill Condon asks us to form our own opinions on WikiLeaks and the search for the truth. Just don’t GChat your friends about how much you liked the movie—the NSA is listening.
