Movie Reviews: The Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate (15A) is a dramatisation of the Wikileaks story, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange, the man who employed the Internet to mastermind the greatest information dump in history.

Directed by Bill Condon, the movie is adapted from a couple of books, one of which was written by Assange’s former right-hand man, Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl). The story covers the evolution of Wikileaks from a small, underground operation — in the beginning it was, essentially, Assange and Berg — that established an online platform to allow whistleblowers to anonymously leak information they believed to be in the public interest. But what was Assange’s real motivation? Was he a shining knight riding into battle on behalf of democracy, transparency and freedom of speech? Or was Wikileaks simply a platform for Julian Assange’s own bid for fame and glory? Condon offers us a tense narrative about Wikileaks’ battle with authority, not least that of the US government, splicing in human foibles and failings as Assange and Berg grow increasingly distant as they fall out over Assange’s methodology. Assange, despite a well-rounded characterisation by Cumberbatch, is ultimately revealed to be a narcissist who is, ironically, rather cavalier with the facts when it comes to telling the truth about himself. Meanwhile, Berg emerges as the hero of the piece, the plucky idealist betrayed by Assange’s self-mythologising (Assange, perpetuating his own legend, offers a number of reasons as to why his hair turned prematurely white, for example). It sags badly as it enters the final act, but The Fifth Estate is nonetheless a fascinatingly flawed film about two fascinatingly flawed men.

Le Week-End (15A) stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as Nick and Meg, a married couple on the verge of retirement who return to Paris to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Any notions the pair might have of rekindling their faded romance are quickly ruined when Nick’s penny-pinching leads to recriminations, old wounds are re-opened, and their marriage is ripped apart. Two fabulous performances in the lead roles, however, provide director Roger Michell with the raw material to play with our preconceived notions of what a love story should be. Nick and Meg bicker, argue, reconcile and start bickering again, their rollercoaster emotional experience — and Broadbent and Duncan’s richly detailed pas-de-deux — carrying us along in its wake, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. There’s more than a hint of Beckett’s Happy Days in Nick and Meg’s relationship, and the film is both bleakly funny and hauntingly conscious of the impending humiliations of old age. Michell deploys the sights and sounds of a tourist-friendly Paris to juxtapose its eternal romantic appeal with the couple’s faltering physical and emotional connection, and the result is arguably the most enjoyable, and certainly the most realistic, love story of the year.

In the wake of the devastating atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII, Emperor (12A) opens as US troops, under the command of General McArthur (Tommy Lee Jones), arrive in Japan to negotiate a fragile peace. Determined to draw a line under the war, McArthur commissions General Fellers (Matthew Fox) to round up those Japanese suspected of being war criminals, including Emperor Hirohito (Takatarô Kataoka). Conscious of the extent to which the Japanese people still revere Hirohito Fellers understands that any clumsy moves by the US could result in a defeated, starving people rising up in a desperate rebellion. Complicating matters is the fact that Fellers is searching for Aya (Eriko Hatsune), the woman he fell in love with in the US before the war broke out. Adapted from a novel by Shiro Okamoto and directed by Peter Webber, Emperor offers a fascinating peek behind the scenes of a ruined Japan, fleshing out the usual war movie caricatures to give us a flavour of a proud culture struggling to cope with the disgrace of defeat. The performances and direction are solid rather than outstanding, but as a whole the film is an enjoyably old-fashioned paean to self-sacrifice. Webber puts the emphasis on the personal-is-the-political aspects of a story that is as emotionally moving as it is historically intriguing.