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For a movie about a larger-than-life personality who shook up the world with his brazenness—and since has had to seek political asylum because of it—"The Fifth Estate" feels unfortunately small and safe.

Director Bill Condon tells the story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a way that seems insular and familiar. It is a tried-and-true tale of rise and fall—of a self-made political and cultural phenomenon whose ambitions are tidily explained away through pop psychology.

The man who has dared to post millions of classified documents online—ones which could potentially compromise both national security and individuals' well-being—certainly must be more than a self-aggrandizing troublemaker. (Although the 42-year-old Australian does continue to issue insistent missives from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which has protected him for over a year now.)

In the hands of a supremely creepy Benedict Cumberbatch , it's easy to imagine how this persuasive, commanding force has mystified the world at large and entranced a few key followers in particular. He's off-putting yet beguiling, odd but elegant. He constantly spouts the need for transparency but lies to everyone around him. But despite Cumberbatch's formidable presence, Assange remains elusive, a white-haired ghost—more of an idea than a fully fleshed-out and complicated man.

Maybe that's the point of Josh Singer's script, based on a couple of books: "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website" by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" by David Leigh and Luke Harding . But it does make it hard to get a grasp on him as a viewer, which is problematic given that he's the engine that drives the film's action.

About that action: Sitting at a laptop typing away furiously isn't the most inherently cinematic pursuit. (Trust me, I'm doing it right now, you wouldn't want to see it.) David Fincher solved that puzzle in " The Social Network " by creating a vivid, thrilling sense of place and through Aaron Sorkin's sharp, lively dialogue. Condon has found clever, emotionally honest avenues into real-life figures in his previous films " Gods and Monsters " and " Kinsey " and shown a flair for the theatrical with "Dreamgirls" and the two-part "Twilight" finale; here, he tries to dramatize his characters' interior lives through a motif that's overly simplistic and rather gimmicky.

He envisions a giant office filled with multiple desks where multiple Assanges hammer away, exposing the truth. (Assange repeatedly informs skeptics and fans alike that WikiLeaks "has thousands of volunteers," when actually it's just him and his hardworking second-in-command, Berg, played by Daniel Brühl .) This sprawling room also serves as the imaginary location of the submission platform, where whistle-blowers could offer up secrets while maintaining anonymity through a complex encryption system. When it all begins to fall apart and the pressure becomes too much, "The Fifth Estate" depicts Berg smashing all that imaginary office furniture in a way that looks like a tantrum and comes off as more of a laughable moment than a startling one.

Condon is also too reliant on montages to cram in a ton of information while simultaneously providing a sense of movement as Assange and Berg hop from one major European city to the next collecting secret information. To the tune of Carter Burwell's thumping techno score to go with the frequently sleek architecture, this technique often makes "The Fifth Estate" feel like a glossy travelogue: Look, they're in Brussels! Now they're in Stockholm! Ooh, Reykjavik looks pretty!

The film begins in October 2010—which seems like a lifetime ago in the Internet age—with The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel simultaneously publishing WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs: 400,000 classified U.S. military documents about the war in Iraq. Editors in all three cities anguish over pressing the button and blasting the story to the world. The moment also provides a flashback to when the German technology expert Berg first met Assange in 2007, quickly fell under his spell and became the fledgling website's first volunteer. Berg is intended as our everyman conduit but compared to the shiny Assange, he's rather dull; Brühl registers far more effectively as the precise and demanding racecar driver Niki Lauda in Ron Howard's "Rush."

From there, "The Fifth Estate" follows Assange's rise to celebrity as WikiLeaks reveals more and more secret and damning information. But aside from a few scenes involving Stanley Tucci , Laura Linney and Anthony Mackie as U.S. government officials wringing their hands and shuffling papers—truly, these supporting roles are a huge waste of three great actors—we don't get much of a sense of the global repercussions of the documents' disclosure. A subplot involving a threat to a longtime asset of Linney's character in Libya (Alexander Siddig, also underused) feels underexplored; it's a blip, when in truth his situation is emblematic of the huge moral quandary that arises repeatedly when WikiLeaks chooses to expose every classified word.

"The Fifth Estate" seems more interested in contributing to a cult of personality, rather than cultivating a serious debate.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

124 minutes

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange

Daniel Brühl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg

Alicia Vikander as Anke

Peter Capaldi as Alan Rusbridger

Jamie Blackley as Ziggy

Stanley Tucci as James Boswell

Dan Stevens as Ian Katz

Laura Linney as Sarah Shaw

Carice van Houten as Birgitta Jonsdottir

David Thewlis as Nick Davies

Moritz Bleibtreu as Marcus

• Bill Condon
• Daniel Domscheidt-Berg
• Josh Singer

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• Entertainment
• Movie Review

'The Fifth Estate' review: truth is more interesting than fiction

Benedict cumberbatch shines in a mainstream take on the wikileaks story.

By Bryan Bishop on October 15, 2013 01:23 pm 74 Comments

There was a stretch in the mid-1990s when Hollywood suddenly wised up to the fact that the internet was here to stay, and jumped on its emergence as the hook for a series of clunky, awkward “cyber-thrillers.” It was an era that gave us the likes of The Net , Johnny Mnemonic , and Hackers , movies that — ironic nostalgia aside — are best left forgotten.

Fast-forward to 2013, and movie studios have taken notice of a different technological revolution, one that has allowed whistleblowers to expose hidden truths and horrific misdeeds through the spread of classified documents. By tackling the story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, The Fifth Estate aims to be a timely depiction of how traditional definitions of media and journalism are changing on a nearly minute-by-minute basis. But despite an impressive turn by star Benedict Cumberbatch it fails to deliver on that promise.

The Fifth Estate focuses largely on the relationship between Cumberbatch’s Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, portrayed by Daniel Brühl ( Rush ) as an idealistic — if naive — IT specialist that served as WikiLeaks’ spokesperson and Assange’s right-hand man. Running from the early days of their partnership through WikiLeaks’ explosion on the world stage, the film starts off as the story of two young upstarts changing the world for the better. The relationship deteriorates, however, as Assange and Domscheit-Berg butt heads in a struggle for power and moral authority, with things coming to a head around the time of the 2010 “Cablegate” leak of US military documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

If his performance in Star Trek Into Darkness felt a little dry compared to the quirky charms of Sherlock , Cumberbatch is able to take his strangeness a step further as Assange. He nails the essence of Assange’s voice and nervous energy, and is able to transmogrify his own charisma into the real man’s hypnotic pull (even when he’s giving a presentation to an empty room, it’s clear Assange has the power to inspire). But despite the allegations of hair dyeing and references to a mysterious childhood, we never get a sense of what makes the man tick. Cumberbatch’s Assange is a cipher, somewhere between prolific savant and egotistical madman, and we never see beyond the persona he chooses to put out into the world.

As the audience surrogate, Brühl fails to stand out in the same way. He’s simply too much of a blind-faith adherent to give the audience anything real to hold onto, and that blandness is something that affects most of the supporting cast. The Fifth Estate is packed with amazing actors — Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney feature as US government officials, Peter Capaldi (soon to star in Doctor Who ) plays The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger — but for the most part they’re painfully underutilized. There’s simply very little for most of them to do, and given that the movie’s real-life events are so fresh in our collective memory it becomes a wait-and-see game of watching things unfold.

As one might expect, a good portion of the drama of The Fifth Estate involves people staring at laptops with furrowed brows, and here’s where the movie really starts to stumble. Turning an IRC chat into a dynamic visual display is no easy feat, and it’s even more difficult when trying to make a film that appeals to the broadest possible audience. Younger audiences, all too familiar with texting and IMs, can be given visual shorthand — Sherlock itself handles the texting issue particularly well — but you run the risk of losing less-savvy audiences. To tackle the problem, The Fifth Estate opts for elaborate visual metaphors whenever its characters jump online. It’s a combination of 1990’s “cyberspace” tropes — digital text is projected on Assange’s face as he chats up Domscheit-Berg in IRC — along with a “virtual newsroom,” row upon row of desks stretching to infinity, to represent all the people taking part in the WikiLeaks organization itself.

On one level, it works quite well: those that aren’t familiar with the nuances of computers, servers, or the internet will absolutely get the gist of what’s going on. But that same elaborate treatment comes across as condescending — and most certainly dated — to everyone else. Couple the visual treatment with a heavy case of Jargon Syndrome™ (take a drink for the casual ffmpeg mention used to establish the tech cred of the WikiLeaks staff) and you get a movie that feels like it’s trying too hard, losing legitimacy with savvy audiences in the process.

All of which is a shame, because the film is clearly enthusiastic about the broader cause of exposing truth in the first place. The sequence when WikiLeaks hits its stride is a clear rallying cry: Domscheit-Berg knows that the site is changing the world for the better, and Condon establishes an energy that makes one want to be part of that movement. The rapid-fire phone calls and split-second decisions as editors of The New York Times , Der Spiegel , and The Guardian decide how to handle leaked documents take on the irresistible rhythm of the spy thriller — all the while the US government is portrayed as flat-footed and downright ignorant of the forces that WikiLeaks is harnessing. The thorny moral and ethical issues that develop — the tension between full transparency and the safety of intelligence agents in the field is the most prominent — are laid at the feet of Assange the man, rather than used to undercut the positive sentiment about the WikiLeaks mission itself.

In WikiLeaks’ own takedown of The Fifth Estate script , it describes the film as “irresponsible, counterproductive, and harmful.” In truth, it’s none of those things — if only for the reason that it would have to be a much more hard-nosed and effective film in order to have that profound of an effect. As it is, The Fifth Estate sits as mild, broadly accessible fare that should start a conversation amongst those that aren’t already familiar with the story — but won’t profoundly change the minds of anyone that’s been paying attention.

The Fifth Estate opens in US theaters this Friday, October 18th.

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The Fifth Estate Review

Benedict cumberbatch shines in drama about the rise of wikileaks..

In trying to tell both the story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, The Fifth Estate bites off more than it can chew. But in spite of the fact that a more focussed narrative might have made for a better movie, Bill Condon’s feature is nevertheless smart, even-handed, and above all thought-provoking, featuring a captivating central performance from Benedict Cumberbatch.

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The Fifth Estate: Toronto 2013 - first look review

For an employee of the Guardian, particularly one with jetlag, Bill Condon's WikiLeaks thriller can seem more hallucination than movie. An account of the ascent of Julian Assange and his collaboration with this newspaper (among others) in the publication of classified documents, it plays like one of those dreams in which your office looks normal enough from the outside, but step within and everything's subtly different. It's more Scandinavian, somehow; with car park pillars and glass walls to which people attach crucial bits of paper, as on Crimewatch. The editor has developed a sudden taste for shagpile rugs. And why did you never notice the deputy is a dead spit for the dishy one on Downton Abbey?

Such tweaks will not get an artistic licence revoked. In fact, in adapting both a book on the affair by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, as well as tech activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg's account of working for Assange, The Fifth Estate is a project in whose sources one can place considerable faith. Certainly, Condon does. At times it can feel he's risked coherence for chronology, giving us his own surfeit of data without offering sufficient kit with which we can sift it.

The plot tracks Assange from the time he recruited Domscheit-Berg, through early online celebrity, before his meeting with Guardian investigative reporter Nick Davies ( David Thewlis ), who, in consultation with editor Alan Rusbridger ( Peter Capaldi ) and deputy Ian Katz (Dan Stevens), began working with Assange towards a coordinated launch of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and war reports. The timeline bumps a bit, but still pushes forward confidently, with our hacker heroes forever arriving in a new city, before some fresh turn of events requires them to slam shut their laptops and rush off again.

The template is David Fincher's The Social Network , which took the creation of Facebook and turned it into the character study of a neurotic loner with the world at his fingertips. Both films go big with the swishy visuals, this one deploying a bombardment of text and newsreel to suggest the morass of info, plus flight map-style graphics illustrating its flood across the globe. Both films are eager to show that computing is an arena for creative genius, with much clacking on laptops like Steinways. Both also suffer from the problem that watching someone type isn't, after a while, that exciting. Condon further ups the dramatic ante with Lynchian visualisations of Domscheit-Berg's inner life, plus a lot of techno.

And both films choose as their key arc the relationship between men most closely associated with the site's inception. But while The Social Network kept the focus on the anti-hero, relegating Eduardo Saverin's role to support, this one bumps up the best friend to a lead, overestimating our interest in Domscheit-Berg's lovelife. Not that the film is really that interested either. At heart, The Fifth Estate is a good, old-fashioned bromance – Assange even gets to meet the parents (spoiler: it doesn't go well).

As for Cumberbatch, he's both the asset and the slight undoing; so magnetic as to render hopes of a two-hander redundant. It's a virtuoso impersonation, from the deep drawl to louche geek twitches. Suited, he could pass for Nick Cave after a night or two in the fridge. Mostly, though, this Assange is as extraterrestrial as Cumberbatch's Khan in last year's Star Trek , a lip-smacking vampire typing through the night. From a distance, he looks like a lizardy angel, courageously saving the world; close up he squints and snuffles like a bleached, greasy mouse.

Introducing the film last night, Condon said he wanted to explore the limits of truth-telling: when was a lie too important not to expose, and when was it so crucial you must not dream of doing so? In that, he has succeeded admirably: this is highly competent catnip for the watercooler crowd. Toronto has prepared itself well for the forthcoming week with a hot potato. Now roll on the cheese.

• First look review
• Julian Assange
• Benedict Cumberbatch
• Peter Capaldi
• Toronto film festival
• Toronto film festival 2013
• The Fifth Estate

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THE FIFTH ESTATE Review

Matt's The Fifth Estate review starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, Laura Linney, and Anthony Mackie.

[ This is a re-post of my review from the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.  The Fifth Estate opens today. ]

Our modes of storytelling change with technology. As we see in the opening credits of Bill Condon ’s The Fifth Estate , we’ve gone from cave paintings to hieroglyphics to the written word to the printing press to the typewriter and currently to the computer. But as The Fifth Estate shows, some stories stay the same, and in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the story is “power corrupts”. Through the structure of a fast-paced, high-stakes thriller, Condon paints a compelling portrait both of Assange and the brave new world created by his controversial brand of journalism. The film is occasionally beset with bursts of editorializing, both on the character of Assange and how WikiLeaks changed the world. But Condon also raises fascinating questions regarding privacy and transparency, power and responsibility, and seeking “truth” in the digital age.

Starting with the eve of WikiLeaks’ biggest story—the logs and records leaked by Bradley Manning—Condon cuts back to Berlin, 2007 where Assange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) and his supporter Daniel Domscheit-Berg ( Daniel Brühl ) are beginning to grow their site. A mixture of hacking, reporting, and anonymity brings them their first big success when they expose the tax evasion perpetrated by a major banking institution. From there, the two men begin a whirlwind of exposes through WikiLeaks’ unique ability to have information submitted anonymously and then verified by Assange and Domscheit-Berg. However, as the site’s power grows, Assange’s already inflated ego becomes even more destructive, and begins to fracture not only the perceived mission of the website, but also his friendship with Domscheit-Berg.

The Fifth Estate will invite comparisons to The Social Network and All the President’s Men even though it’s not as good or as groundbreaking as those movies. Assange has the anti-social tendencies of the Mark Zuckerberg character, and Condon makes investigative journalism look very cool. But The Fifth Estate is far too self-conscious about its famous figure. The movie is careful to praise and condemn Assange in equal measure, and while his reputation is impossible to ignore, the character is only a notable piece in a much larger picture.

Assange is a curious character, but his creation is far more fascinating, and Condon makes sure to invest his picture in the mission and purpose of WikiLeaks. In the site’s ideal form, it’s a way to protect whistleblowers by providing complete anonymity. “Privacy for the individual, transparency for the powerful,” Assange says at one point. But those lofty intentions also render people in the abstract. Even Assange’s estranged relationship with his son is only regarded as a “sacrifice”, which in turn becomes a badge of honor. But an avenger can only see the crusade, and it’s exhilarating and captivating to watch Assange and Domscheit-Berg on their mad quest.

Condon uses some fantastic visuals in order to navigate the tricky task of depicting online journalism. He not only uses the now-familiar trick of writing texts and e-mails over the action (as opposed to only looking at what’s on the device’s screen). For the “newsroom”, he brings Assange and Domscheit-Berg into the idea of what a digital newsroom looks like: endless desks in a dark grey landscape. Woodward and Bernstein have left the building because there is no more building. There is only the idea of the building, and the ideals therein are hazy.

Those ideals clash at the film’s heart, which is the relationship between Assange and Domscheit-Berg. They may believe in the same thing at the outset, but Domscheit-Berg must fight to become the site’s conscience as Assange becomes powerful and corrupt in his relentless drive to bring down the powerful and corrupt. When it comes to releasing the Afghanistan documents provided by Manning, Assange’s believes that WikiLeaks’ obligation is to the unedited truth while Domscheit-Berg believes that they need to redact the names in order to protect informants, agents, etc. Through this new prism created by WikiLeaks, how does journalism serve “the people”?

Truth and technology are inexorably intertwined because the medium is the message. Even Condon implicitly acknowledges how his movie has crafted a perception of Assange based on the source material as well as casting, editing, etc. The Fifth Estate isn’t trying to expose the “real” Julian Assange. It’s trying to examine how Assange’s creation has taken our perception of the “truth” in a bold, new, and controversial direction. The Fifth Estate provides another layer where instead of a lecture on journalism and reporting in the digital age, we get a fun, flashy picture that makes sure we consider the source.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Fifth Estate

Content caution.

In Theaters

• October 18, 2013
• Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange; Daniel Brühl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg; Anthony Mackie as Sam Coulson; David Thewlis as Nick Davies; Moritz Bleibtreu as Marcus; Alicia Vikander as Anke Domscheit-Berg; Stanley Tucci as James Boswell; Laura Linney as Sarah Shaw; Carice van Houten as Birgitta Jónsdóttir; Peter Capaldi as Alan Rusbridger; Dan Stevens as Ian Katz; Jamie Blackley as Ziggy

Home Release Date

• January 28, 2014
• Bill Condon

Distributor

• Walt Disney

Movie Review

Consider The Fifth Estate’ s Julian Assange a secular prophet, if you will.

His attention is not on the vastness of God, but on untold gigabytes of information. He speaks not for the divine, but for the documents. Millions of them. Billions. More, perhaps—written and recorded by bureaucrats the world over, sent and read and watched and, finally, hidden. Perhaps forgotten. In these documents is truth, Julian believes: uncomfortable, electric, dangerous truth. In these documents is the power to change the world, to tear down kingdoms and countries and bring about something better, purer, more transparent.

In the beginning— WikiLeaks’ beginning—were the words. And the words were Julian’s god.

Julian began his devoted service in solitude, according to The Fifth Estate . From the outset, he sought to bring light to the world’s darkest places—to force secretive, corrupt organizations and governments to become more transparent and beholden to the people they’re supposed to be serving. Soon he cultivated another acolyte in Daniel Berg and drew in a bevy of supporters, admirers and helpers. They considered themselves 21st-century journalists—giving sources and whistle-blowers a safe place to spill whatever info they held. “Even I don’t know the identity of our sources,” Julian tells Daniel. Anonymity, he believes, is the key to giving these canaries courage. Anonymity, he hopes, will change the world.

And indeed, the world begins to change. Though WikiLeaks is a small organization, its influence begins to grow. It exposes illegalities at a Swiss bank, publishes Scientology’s secretive “bibles” and takes on human rights abuses in Kenya. In three years, Daniel brags, WikiLeaks published more scoops than The Washington Post has in 30. And the leaks keep springing.

But as WikiLeaks ‘ influence grows, so do the questions. What if these leaked documents derail diplomatic efforts? Could they needlessly embarrass important (and upright) officials? And what about the people mentioned in these leaks? Could lives be at risk? Could real people be sacrificed on WikiLeaks ‘ altar of free information? Would Julian say that innocent blood is sometimes needed to wash away the world’s sin?

Positive Elements

The Fifth Estate is a heady examination of WikiLeaks and its controversial founder, Julian Assange. And while there was and is great debate over whether WikiLeaks has been “good” or “bad” in practice, the core ideal (at least as presented in the movie) is plenty positive: To encourage governments and organizations to open up to the cleansing light of the sun and stop doing so many dark deeds.

“No one can bar the road to truth,” Julian quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as saying. He wants, at least on some level, to make the world a better place, and in his eyes that means making it more transparent.

Early in the film, he and Daniel stand on a cathedral balcony and look down at the Reichstag building in Berlin—an edifice topped by a gigantic glass dome meant to represent the government’s (idyllic) transparency to its people. The theory behind the concept of the free press (the so-called Fourth Estate) is that, without prodding, governments and organizations tend to be secretive, and secrecy can twist and corrupt those organizations into something horrible. The press is necessary to keep such entities in check. But with traditional journalism dwindling under economic pressures, Julian sees WikiLeaks as fulfilling the function that the free press is flagging on. And with the advent of the global Internet, he can influence activities in “closed” countries in a way that traditional journalism never could. As if to illustrate his point, a woman lauds Julian and his site, telling him that if WikiLeaks had been around back then, the Berlin Wall would’ve fallen years earlier.

And even if you have serious doubts about what they’re doing, you have to still admire the dedication we see from Julian and Daniel. They are, especially in the beginning, activists who are trying to do what’s right—even if it means they’re risking their livelihoods … or lives. Indeed, Daniel’s fired from his job when his involvement with WikiLeaks becomes known. And both worry that various governments may be spying on them, but they persevere anyway.

Spiritual Elements

We’re told that Julian grew up in a cult (a detail explicitly refuted by WikiLeaks ). And Daniel is warned by his partner, Anke (with whom in real life he shares the hyphenated last name Domscheit-Berg), “If you’re going to nail yourself to a cross you should probably know what it’s made of.”

Sexual Content

Daniel and Anke sleep together after their first date. We see her in his bed the next morning, apparently naked, as implied by her bare shoulders. The two fall into a long-term relationship, though Daniel’s devotion to WikiLeaks is a source of friction. “Do you remember the last time we had sex?” Anke asks him. He replies he’ll remember the next time they do—and the two begin kissing and engaging in foreplay, clutching, touching and stripping off articles of clothing. (Their intimacy is interrupted when Julian barges in.) Another bed-based tryst is shown later.

Julian Assange has been accused of sexual misconduct by two Swedish women—accusations the film acknowledges near the end. He makes an obscene hand motion at one point.

We briefly see two women kiss at a club.

Violent Content

Two of Julian’s whistle-blowers are gunned down in the streets of Kenya—assassinated while sitting in a car. The attack is shocking in its suddenness, and we see blood streaked across the car windows.

Most of the rest of the violence here comes in the form of news footage and images from security cameras. “You don’t like ugly pictures, you should stay out of ugly wars,” remarks a U.S. government official at one point. Most notable, perhaps, is the so-called “Collateral Murder” video (a title thought up by Julian, according to the film) depicting images from a 2007 American airstrike in Baghdad in which several civilians (including two reporters for Reuters) were killed. The black-and-white footage was taken from the cockpit of American Apache helicopters. “Look at all those dead b‑‑tards,” someone’s heard saying. We also see film of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and other scenes of violence during a montage.

Crude or Profane Language

Seven or eight f-words. Double that for s-words. We hear multiple uses of “a‑‑,” “b‑‑tard,” “d‑‑n,” “h‑‑‑,” “p‑‑‑,” “pr‑‑k,” “w-nker,” “b-gger” and “bloody.” God’s name is misused a half-dozen or more times (half the time with “d‑‑n”), and Jesus’ name is abused a handful of times too.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Julian and Daniel do quite a lot of their work while in European nightclubs. They imbibe wine, beer and other drinks. Old friends banter over how much one of them had to drink long ago. It’s shown that the cult Julian is connected to as a child relied at least partially on psychiatric drugs to control its members. Daniel and Julian down energy drinks to stay awake.

Other Negative Elements

Here’s where some of the comparisons between WikiLeaks’ Fifth Estate status and the free press’s Fourth Estate status start to break down a bit: When WikiLeaks is given a huge cache of American intelligence, Julian and Daniel arrange to work with The New York Times, London’s The Guardian and Berlin’s Der Spiegel to get the word out. But while we’re told that the mainline papers redact (censor) names, addresses or identifiers that might endanger those mentioned in the documents, WikiLeaks releases the documents without exercising any such restraint.

Julian from the start maintains that WikiLeaks has “hundreds” of volunteers. And when Daniel learns that the staff is at the time, really, just Julian and a bunch of fake email addresses, Daniel’s furious about having been tricked into lying to several journalists. Julian casually brushes away his unease, calling the ruse a “necessary fiction.”

Daniel and Julian eventually have a falling out, and the aftermath is not pretty. Julian smears Daniel’s reputation on WikiLeaks’ chatboard, saying he likely has some sort of mental disorder. [ Spoiler Warning ] Daniel responds by sabotaging the site. We hear also that Julian has a 19-year-old son whom he hasn’t seen in a year because (he suggests) WikiLeaks demands so much time of him.

In the wake of WikiLeaks ‘ epic 2010 release of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents, a lifelong diplomat is fired. Onscreen, she and a co-worker share a last drink before she heads off into the parking lot. She contemplates how much time she’s worked as a diplomat—how much schooling, how much training she’s undergone, how she weighed every word and measured every phrase for impact. She lost her job because of a stray comment she made on an otherwise insignificant document—a document that, like so many others, was blasted out into open Internet waters by Julian Assange.

“I don’t know which one of us history will judge more harshly,” she says. And it’s actually a pretty good question. Does traditional diplomacy, where words are weighed like gold and half-truths are couched in linguistic niceties, have any place on a planet where every secret is just a mouse click away? Is there a place for nuance in a world full of data dumps?

The Fifth Estate is a dense, ponderous (and sometimes foul) look at Julian Assange and the complex array of secrets he helped leak. Julian and Daniel are presented as complementary conduits to an arguably greater good. Julian is cast as a mad prophet—a visionary whose ambition is to change the world. Daniel is Julian’s moral check—reeling Julian back in when the white-haired wunderkind goes too far. They eventually split along those very dividing lines, Julian determined to release a treasure trove of documents unedited (which could threaten many lives) while Daniel wants to edit the docs first.

“These are human beings, Julian!” Daniel tells him. “There are lives at stake!”

Julian is ultimately unmoved. He believes that governments and corporations need a forceful check on their power, and in the absence of a robust traditional free press, he believes the task falls to him.

But who, then, is left to check WikiLeaks? Who checks Julian?

This is the central conundrum The Fifth Estate poses. Newspapers have had hundreds of years to develop their own code of ethics to help ensure at least a semblance of responsibility. Not so the burgeoning Internet, fronted for the moment by Assange’s WikiLeaks . It has no real gatekeepers, no code of conduct to follow. Is that good? The film suggests not. We all need checks, it says.

So it somehow feels fitting in a curiously circular way that WikiLeaks , long before The Fifth Estate arrived in theaters, obtained and, of course, leaked a script for the project before posting this tweet: “As WikiLeaks was never consulted about the upcoming Hollywood film on us, we’ve given our advice for free: It’s bad”.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Fifth Estate Reviews

A rather ham fisted look at the information wars, which contains some drama but takes too long to get to the good stuff.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 31, 2021

It is less involving when we're forced to sit through ancillary storylines and conflicts that do little to advance the story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 7, 2020

Very few films this year have registered such a lack of an emotional reaction.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 23, 2020

You can't make a character study of a man with this many secrets and you can't make a thriller out of people typing.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Aug 27, 2019

Cumberbatch is by far The Fifth Estate's trump card, bequeathing us with a convincing impersonation of Assange. Sadly, that's all it is: an impersonation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 5, 2019

Given its own aggressive attention deficit disorder, The Fifth Estate is the sort of movie that might induce a migraine.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2019

We understand and even sympathize with Daniel's crisis of conscience, but it is not enough to sustain the whole enterprise, and it would likely have been better to dramatize more of WikiLeaks' effects on the world and discuss them a bit less.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 25, 2019

This noncommittal viewpoint of a "half WikiLeaks documentary/ half dramatic narrative" made for, ultimately, one mediocre film.

Full Review | Dec 14, 2018

Nonetheless, this is an engaging portrayal of what will likely be a historical game changer in news and transparency.

Full Review | Nov 1, 2018

Those in the know say Cumberbatch's performance captures the physical Assange perfectly, but the film fails to get a handle on him as a personality, or offer any kind of insight into what his true motivation might be.

Full Review | Sep 5, 2018

Daniel Bruhl was highly watchable as Assange's second in command, and all these interesting people grappled with compelling questions about what their rights and responsibilities were towards the information they were handed.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2018

Condon misuses his characters and tries to turn the film into a suspenseful high-stakes drama but falls very short in his execution.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 14, 2018

This is absurdity piled on melodrama piled on rubbish trousers and weird Ikea furniture, a bad weekly meeting of the Hampstead chapter of Fathers 4 Justice with added Pantene.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 6, 2018

A movie about Assange and WikiLeaks is bound to be tough to tackle and while it has a few things going for it, Condon could have scored better if he chose to focus deeper on Assange's admittedly complex and mysterious psyche.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2017

Yes a stellar cast was compiled, but it rings false nonetheless.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jun 22, 2016

There are real treasures to be had here, the most prestigious of which is an effortless turn from Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 10, 2016

This breathless thriller that treats the speed of data as a matter of life and death.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

Benedict Cumberbatch's performance is the knockout, precise, conflicted, mysterioso, wily, his own charm alloyed with the Aussie oddness of Assange.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2014

The film never seems to know what it wants to be, or where it is going with all of these gimmicks, gadgets and subplots. It ends up as a yawner, a thriller with no thrills, history without context.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Mar 24, 2014

A great performance surrounded by a very bad movie.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2014

clock This article was published more than  10 years ago

‘The Fifth Estate’ movie review

As part of an exceptionally strong season of fact-based dramas on screen, " The Fifth Estate ," about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrives with something of a shrug. At its best, the film works as a serious showcase for its capable star, the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who delivers an eerily on-point portrayal of the enigmatic central character.

And, as a primer on the early days of WikiLeaks and its crusade for transparency and governmental and corporate accountability, “The Fifth Estate” provides useful reminders to audiences who may have come to equate the organization with Assange’s own overweening ego and strange persona.

But as a piece of filmed entertainment, "The Fifth Estate" shows why things like authorial point of view and visual sensibility are so essential in bringing such stories to life. Unlike its most obvious predecessor, " The Social Network ," this film doesn't have much of either, and the weakness shows.

Based on books by former Assange collaborators Daniel Domscheit-Berg , David Leigh and Luke Harding , "The Fifth Estate" focuses on Assange's relationship with Domscheit-Berg (played in the film by "Rush" star Daniel Bruhl), a computer programmer in Germany who meets the snow-haired Australian at a hackers' conference and quickly warms to his calls for "a whole new form of social justice" by way of using encryption to protect whistleblowers.

Domscheit-Berg throws in with Assange, who has created WikiLeaks in the belief that "if you give a man a mask, he'll tell you the truth." And for a while, it works: In bracing sequences, "The Fifth Estate" shows Assange and Domscheit-Berg exposing powerful banks, corrupt regimes and fraudulent elections, driven by their righteous, sober-minded belief in freedom of expression and unfettered access to raw information.

The dream begins to sour with WikiLeaks' most high-profile "gets," the release of footage of U.S. forces killing two Reuters reporters in Iraq and a subsequent leak of sensitive State Department cables . Working with newspapers in Germany, London and the United States, Assange refuses to redact material that might have led to the death of intelligence assets.

Regardless of its on-the-one-hand-on-the-other approach, “The Fifth Estate” clearly suggests Assange has blood on his hands. Whether that’s the cost of a far higher aim or a sign of Assange’s moral arrogance is the crux of the debate that the film seeks to engage, but never fully animates.

Director Bill Condon, working from a script by Josh Singer, tries to hype the story, by way of awkward scenes of State Department officials (Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci), a gratuitous subplot involving Domscheit-Berg's love life and a visual trope involving an empty office that winds up being clumsy and intrusive just when "The Fifth Estate" should be taut and keenly focused. (For a terrific documentary account of Assange's career, see Alex Gibney's " We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks ," released earlier this year .)

As with “The Social Network,” the challenge of “The Fifth Estate” is to inject visual interest in a story that’s essentially a bunch of guys looking at computer screens — a challenge that Condon wrestles with uneven success.

What’s more, he seems fatally unsure of what he himself believes about Assange, who at one point observes that the media are far more interested in how weird he is rather than the substance of his revelations.

Ultimately “The Fifth Estate” seems guilty of the same charge, as the movie speculates on his own shifting autobiography and whether he dyes his hair. Assange may be right, he may be wrong — he may be a bit of both. Whatever is true, he deserves a sharper, more consequential movie.

R. At area theaters. Contains profanity and some violence. 124 minutes.

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Movie Reviews

Wikileaks gets a hollywood gloss in 'fifth estate'.

Mark Jenkins

Benedict Cumberbatch (left), sporting the white-blond mop of the real Julian Assange, and Daniel Bruhl, who plays Daniel Domscheit-Berg, take on the story of WikiLeaks in The Fifth Estate. Frank Connor/DreamWorks II hide caption

Benedict Cumberbatch (left), sporting the white-blond mop of the real Julian Assange, and Daniel Bruhl, who plays Daniel Domscheit-Berg, take on the story of WikiLeaks in The Fifth Estate.

The Fifth Estate

• Director: Bill Condon
• Genre: Drama
• Running Time: 128 minutes

Rated Rated R for language and some violence

With: Benedict Cumberbatch , Daniel Bruhl , Laura Linney

The saga of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is too large a data dump for a two-hour drama. Yet director Bill Condon seeks to complicate as well as simplify in The Fifth Estate, an entertaining if inevitably unreliable current events romp.

The opening credits present a pocket history of textual communication, from cuneiform to the Internet. Condon, who took a similarly breathless approach with Kinsey, is announcing that his subject is nothing less than how the Web transformed communication.

That is indeed one thread of Josh Singer's script, derived from two books on Assange and his organization. But the movie's spine is the relationship between the white-haired Australian (eerily embodied by Benedict Cumberbatch) and the author of one of those tomes, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl).

The two meet at a 2007 hacker convention in Berlin, and Domscheit-Berg (under the alias Schmitt) quickly becomes WikiLeaks' chief lieutenant. Even he doesn't know that at first, because the self-dramatizing Assange claims to have many associates. But they, like much of the operation, are fiction.

Assange At The Movies

'We Steal Secrets': A Sidelong Look At WikiLeaks

Movie interviews, documentary introduces the man behind wikileaks.

Intent on the title's conceit that the Web has supplanted traditional journalism's role as the "fourth estate" of civil society, Condon periodically presents WikiLeaks as a newsroom, sometimes busy and sometimes nearly deserted. When Berg realizes he's been electronically conversing with several pseudonyms for Assange, the place fills with multiples of a lank-haired, long-faced Cumberbatch. WikiLeaks, in style if not in substance, is The Matrix .

Angry at being deceived, Berg nonetheless remains with Assange and even recruits a friend and fellow computer savant (Moritz Bleibtreu). They and a few others expose political murders in Kenya, Scientology's esoteric doctrines, banking scandals in Iceland and Switzerland. In 2010 comes the classified U.S. information about military activities in Afghanistan, not to mention a quarter million State Department cables.

These massive releases bring WikiLeaks into a fraught alliance with three newspapers, personified on-screen principally by David Thewlis as a reporter for the U.K.-based Guardian. It also rattles the Obama administration, as embodied in composite characters played by Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney.

The film's core narrative is driven by the intense relationship between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, but it also ventures into a subplot involving U.S. officials (Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci) dealing with the consequences of WikiLeaks' disruptive data dumps. Frank Connor/DreamWorks II hide caption

The film's core narrative is driven by the intense relationship between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, but it also ventures into a subplot involving U.S. officials (Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci) dealing with the consequences of WikiLeaks' disruptive data dumps.

In a subplot that attempts to illustrate the real-world effects of WikiLeaks' failure to redact documents, Linney's veteran diplomat hurries to extract from Libya a no-longer-confidential source (Alexander Siddig). But Cumberbatch's portrayal of a mercurial, megalomaniacal Assange conveys recklessness more pungently than this cinematic side trip to Libya.

Like most films that attempt to visualize the Internet's 0's and 1s, The Fifth Estate flashes letters and numbers on the screen, sometimes lashing them with simulated glitches. But the movie doesn't just strive to convey the speed of digital communication. It also sends its principal characters hopping from city to city, continent to continent, restlessly on the move. (One sign that this is a Hollywood product: Nobody gets stuck on the tarmac, or even has to wait for a taxi.)

The movie sketches its version of Assange's back story with rough strokes: several childhood years spent in an Australian cult, a teenage hacking adventure that took him into NASA computers and almost to jail. To comprehend this history lesson, it would help to read up in advance, or at least watch We Steal Secrets, Alex Gibney's Assange documentary .

Condon himself shifts to the documentary format at the end, offering quick notes on Assange's current situation — including the only mention of sexual assault allegations leveled against him — and short clips from an interview.

In one of these, the Wiki man denounces the movie he expects Condon to make. It might seem gracious of the director to let Assange end the film by damning it. But as The Fifth Estate excitedly illustrates, in the Internet age no one can ever really have the last word.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

• User Reviews
• epochal issue: the what and how of Wikileaks
• personality: who is Julian Assange
• topical: the world of hackers or espionage
• simple good story telling
• GOSSIP about an infamous hacker's private, personal habits in petty details only a sibling or wife would know
• DEMONIZE an already maligned public figure, showing only one-side (the bad of course) interpersonal behaviors and secret selfish motivation only psychics or God would know
• PRESENT ONE SINGLE PERSON'S testimony as absolute truth - Berg's ego-less, flawless, selfless, 100% altruistic angel (yeah right if they say so)

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The Fifth Estate

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Maybe it’s because the tale of WikiLeaks mad genius Julian Assange is still being written, but The Fifth Estate never settles down long enough to make a case for or against this controversial figure. It helps that British actor Benedict Cumberbatch excels as the digital whistle-blower from Australia who became notorious for giving other whistle-blowers a protected digital forum to leak classified documents. Assange hit maximum exposure in 2010 when he linked up with The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel to disseminate Bradley Manning’s cache of state secrets.

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How did Assange get to the point where he must seek asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy while his enemies scream for his extradition, including the Swedish police, who want him for questioning in a sexual-assault case? That’s the movie. And it runs around frantically trying to squeeze it all in.

Working from a script by Josh Singer ( Fringe ), director Bill Condon ( Gods and Monsters , Kinsey ) – finally free from the gunk of two Twilight movies – at least tries to perform due diligence to the narrative. In 2007, the loner Assange begins collaborating with German technocrat Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl of Rush ), whose book, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website , is one of the sources of the screenplay. As a result, Domscheit-Berg comes off mostly credible, Assange mostly creepy. It’s fun to watch fine actors like Cumberbatch and Brühl go at each other. But the feuds and romances at the office and the subplot with Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as State Department cogs feel like filler. It’s ironic that Alex Gibney’s recent WikiLeaks doc uploads the same material with more dramatic oomph. The Fifth Estate is stuck running in place.

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The fifth estate, common sense media reviewers.

Confusing WikiLeaks docudrama mostly avoids iffy content.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Attempts to explore and balance the complex issue

Looks at the motivations of both whistleblowers an

Two men are killed by gunfire at point blank range

An adult couple is shown kissing, beginning to und

Some swearing and obscenities: numerous instances

A shot of a McDonald's franchise; World of War

Adults are seen drinking various alcoholic beverag

Parents need to know that most kids will have little interest in The Fifth Estate , a docudrama about WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the release of classified government documents. The film deals with complex issues such as whistleblowing, privacy rights, hacking, and media responsibility. Hand…

Positive Messages

Attempts to explore and balance the complex issue of transparency (the public's right to know) versus the necessity for government secrecy. Suggests that institutional corruption is common; it must be reported and the perpetrators held responsible for their actions. Questions the morality of hacking to secure crucial information. Contends that "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Positive Role Models

Looks at the motivations of both whistleblowers and the mainstream media to show positive outcomes of their efforts as well as the danger of obsession and self-interest. Central character is portrayed as having good intentions initially, but losing sight of right and wrong as his influence grows. The other character (on whose book the movie is based) is shown as the most moral character. Strives for some fairness in its depiction of government officials and media personnel.

Violence & Scariness

Two men are killed by gunfire at point blank range while sitting in a car and the camera lingers on the bloody windshield. Video footage of soldiers killing civilians in a way that seems callous. Newsreel footage briefly shows rioting, police repression, beatings, effects of starvation. A tense series of scenes where it seems a man, woman, and baby might be in danger.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

An adult couple is shown kissing, beginning to undress, engaging in moderate foreplay in several scenes. They are also seen lying in bed together after sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Some swearing and obscenities: numerous instances of "f--k," "s--t," "Goddamn," "hell." Also "a--hole" and "pr--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A shot of a McDonald's franchise; World of Warcraft game is mentioned, as is WIRED magazine. Various actual newspapers, banks, organizations are included as part of the story.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults are seen drinking various alcoholic beverages in numerous settings: party, restaurants, at home, while working. A man is driving as he swigs from a bottle which may contain beer.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that most kids will have little interest in The Fifth Estate , a docudrama about WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the release of classified government documents. The film deals with complex issues such as whistleblowing, privacy rights, hacking, and media responsibility. Hand-held camerawork, edgy fast-paced editing, and dizzying split-screen shots of computer data further speed up and confuse these already sophisticated concepts. Aside from the topics addressed, the main issues that might concern parents are the occasional but strong language (including multiple uses of "f--k" and "s--t") and the scene where two men are shot point blank in their car and the camera lingers on blood. There's also some passionate kissing between a couple and the implication of sex. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

THE FIFTH ESTATE takes on WikiLeaks from its launch, as remembered by Daniel Berg whose split from Julian Assange, the whistleblower-founder, was explosive and complete. Though initially the website was devoted to exposing corruption and criminality (early subjects detailed in the film are Swiss bank Julius Baer, the Kenyan government, and the Icelandic financial crisis), the body of the film thrusts WikiLeaks' Assange ( Benedict Cumberbatch) into a battle with the United States over the release of a massive number of classified documents. Throughout the conflict, WikiLeaks' associate Berg (Daniel Bruhl ) struggles to stay in a committed relationship with his girlfriend, to maintain his own sense of right and wrong, and to deal with Assange's increasingly maniacal egotism. When it becomes clear that the leaks will endanger operatives throughout the world, the stakes get higher and Berg, along with government officials and some members of the mainstream media, must take drastic steps.

Is It Any Good?

Admittedly, clarity is difficult when so much of the story depends upon on-screen computer data, hacking, and issues that cannot be immediately classified as black or white. Unfortunately, the filmmakers, led by director Bill Condon , have opted for a complex storytelling style, including rapid-fire editing, harsh angles, multiple split-screen sequences, visual metaphors, and other techniques that are designed to speed up and intensify audience reaction.

The result? Rather than simplify what is already a complex tale with crucial issues at its core, the film will probably turn off audiences with side stories designed to extrude emotion, but which just add to the haphazard narrative. Also, the movie will have little appeal for kids, even older ones, unless they are well-versed and interested in these true events. Alex Gibney's documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks offers a better and clearer look at Julian Assange and his operation.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can discuss the differences between docudramas and documentaries. How much truth do you think can be compromised in either type of film in order to make a movie entertaining or persuasive?

The source material is Daniel Berg's book "Inside WikiLeaks..." Why is important to know the origins of the film's point-of-view?

Find out more about the actual events depicted in this movie. What resources are available to you?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 18, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : January 28, 2014
• Cast : Benedict Cumberbatch , Daniel Bruhl , David Thewlis
• Director : Bill Condon
• Inclusion Information : Gay directors
• Studio : DreamWorks
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 128 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language and some violence
• Last updated : April 9, 2023

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The Fifth Estate Review

11 Oct 2013

124 minutes

Fifth Estate, The

Is The Fifth Estate a cunning ruse by the intelligence services to lure Julian Assange out of his embassy bolt-hole? Imagine the agony! The hottest young Hollywood talent acting out the story of your life and you can’t check it out. What kind of raging egomaniac could resist? Well, he’d be wise to try. Bill Condon’s account of the WikiLeaks brouhaha is a plodding and preachy film that treads well-worn ground without adding anything new or particularly animating what’s known.

Taking the story from the site’s early days, it charts the outfit’s initial headline-grabbing scoops, from the publishing of the membership of the BNP, complete with addresses and telephone numbers, to the Chelsea, née Bradley, Manning episode that brought the whole cyber-edifice crashing down. David Thewlis is mildly embarrassing as Nick Davies, a Guardian investigative hack prone to storming dramatically into meetings. Peter Capaldi, meanwhile, looks anxious and grips his chin a lot as editor Alan Rusbridger. Benedict Cumberbatch is effective as Assange, insofar as his performance is one-note and creepy, but Daniel Brühl struggles with the underwritten role of co-conspirator Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Condon, working from an uneven, pedestrian screenplay by ex-West Wing writer Josh Singer, at first attempts to give the piece a post-Bourne patina complete with jittery titles and insistent score (courtesy of Carter Burwell), but soon a fondness for hackneyed visual devices emerges. When Assange fiddles with his files, luminous characters skitter across his face. An effect Ridley Scott used to great effect in Alien. Nearly 40 years ago.

There are technical saving graces: Tobias A. Schliessler’s cinematography and Mark Tildeseley’s production design atmospherically conjure the throbbing techno clubs and coffee shops in which the plotters gather, while Condon gets the most out of his European locations, particularly the blasted alien moonscapes of Iceland against which Assange looks almost at home. In a The Man Who Fell To Earth kind of way.

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Fifth Estate, The (United States/Belgium, 2013)

Perhaps the most curious and counterproductive aspect of The Fifth Estate , the so-called "Wikileaks movie," is the decision by director Bill Condon and screenwriter Josh Singer to establish the film as a thriller. The material covered in the production's 128 minutes is not only inherently non-cinematic but not remotely "thrilling," at least in the conventional sense. Condon does his best to amp up the energy level, and there are individual scenes when he succeeds, but the movie as a whole works best during its quieter, more dramatic moments. The inclusion of tangentially related subplots (featuring the likes of Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, and Alexander Siddig) create suspenseful capsules but ultimately seem so disconnected from the overall narrative that they serve as distractions.

The Fifth Estate contains some worthwhile material, most of which is related to Benedict Cumberbatch's mesmerizing, multi-faceted performance. Since exploding on the scene in the BBC-TV series Sherlock , Cumberbatch has become typecast as an intellectually cold, emotionally stunted, off-kilter individual. It's a quality he has brought to most of his recent roles, including a turn as Khan in JJ Abrams' Star Trek into Darkness . Perhaps the reason is that Cumberbatch is so good at playing this type of personality. His skill is in evidence here; his interpretation of Julian Assange is that of a man who is many things at one time: mad prophet, sincere visionary, egomaniac, charismatic guru, narcissist. The Fifth Estate 's thriller aspects emerge from Assange's inflated sense of self-importance and his evolving paranoia.

The film's structure is haphazard but, in the main, it tells of the rise of Wikileaks from an obscure website run by a man with a strict code that includes promoting free speech (at all costs), demanding transparency from big companies, and protecting sources. In the early-going, Assange is a heroic figure, a Robin Hood for the information age. Finding the task of running Wikileaks to be too big for one person, he brings aboard Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl), whose book forms the basis of the screenplay. Together, Assange and Berg score their first big coup, the February 2008 revelations of illegal activities associated with the Swiss bank Julius Baer. After that, they become involved in cat-and-mouse games with various government and legal agencies that try (usually without success) to stop the release of "sensitive" information. As Wikileaks grows, Daniel becomes increasingly concerned about Assange's methods. The two eventually split in 2010 when Assange, after partnering with The Guardian, The New York Times , and Der Spiegel , releases more than 90,000 U.S. classified documents without redacting the names of operatives, thereby putting lives in danger. Helped by two other members of Assange's staff (Moritz Bleibtreu and Carice van Houten), Daniel attempts to shut down the site.

The Fifth Estate 's portrait of Assange is fragmented; in many ways, he's a secondary character since the story is presented through Berg's eyes. The "real" Assange rarely comes to the fore although there are times, such as a scene where he confides feelings of guilt and loss about neglecting his teenage son in favor of his "commitment" to Wikileaks, when Condon shows a glimpse of the man behind the image. While Assange comes to life largely through the Herculean performance of Cumberbatch, Berg isn't as lucky. Daniel Bruhl (recently seen in Ron Howard's Rush) isn't as dynamic an actor and Berg often fades into the background. This is a problem since one of the film's cornerstones is the often-stormy relationship between Assange and Berg.

Three subplots clutter the proceedings. One involves Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, and Anthony Mackie as U.S. government employees trying to deal with the Wikileaks fallout. Another focuses on Alexander Siddig as a source in Lebanon whose life is placed in danger by Assange's refusal to redact names. And a third peeks behind-the-scenes at The Guardian , where top editors played by David Thewlis and Peter Capaldi figure out how to disseminate information being fed to them by Assange. Of those three, only The Guardian segments work within the overall context. The other two belong in a different movie and, when those characters are on screen, viewers may feel like they're watching a different movie.

Assange has gone to great lengths to discredit the movie. Considering that its portrayal of him is less than flattering, that's not surprising. The story closely follows the source material but there are open questions about the factual accuracy of those books. Condon uses a late scene in the movie to address Assange's criticisms by having the character, as played by Cumberbatch, complain about "the upcoming Wikileaks movie." It's a curious moment that seems to have been incorporated as a concession. It's the first time I can recall (at least in a serious-minded film) a character openly referring to the movie in which he is appearing. Cinematic recursion.

I prefer to think of Condon as the filmmaker behind Gods and Monsters rather than the man responsible for Breaking Dawn . The intent of The Fifth Estate is a return to the earlier, more serious films. The misstep isn't the subject; it's how the subject is presented. As a thriller, The Fifth Estate is strangely inert, with a lot of movement but little in the way of genuine suspense. There are frequent shots of computer screens and numerous information-providing subtitles. The saving grace is Cumberbatch, whose overwhelming screen presence almost makes the film's flaws fade away. Almost, that is, but not quite.

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The Fifth Estate Parent Guide

"the fifth estate" certainly leaves you asking questions. when it comes to deciding if assange's work makes him a hero or a traitor, the answer will entirely depend on what lens you choose..

This drama is based on the life of Julian Assange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), the founder of WikiLeaks. The film focuses on the relationship between him and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) and how the success of their websites leads to the failure of their friendship.

Release date October 18, 2013

Run Time: 128 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

In the good old days, theaters used to run a newsreel before the feature presentation. Now with The Fifth Estate, the subject of film itself has barely left the front page. And because the story dramatizing the life of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is one that is still evolving, it almost seems too early for anyone to really capture a definitive perspective. Regardless, director Bill Condon and screenwriter Josh Singer attempt to do just that, working from books penned by insider Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

Although Julian Assange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is the principal subject of the movie, point-of-view is everything. In this case the tale of the controversial website creator is seen through the eyes of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) who first meets the white-haired Australian in person at the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin. Best described as a techno-hippie, Berg watches Assange’s scattered presentation about his novel and safe method for whistleblowers to reveal corruption. While inspired by the cause of true freedom of speech, Burg suspects the real genius of the idea is being obscured by Assange’s tactless demeanor and technospeak. A computer hacker extraordinaire himself, Berg offers his publicity efforts and IT skills to help make Wikileaks successful. Along the way the bespectacled geek also manages to place himself into the wary Assange’s inner-circle.

Most of the action in this film is a war of words. To break-up some of the heavy dialogue, the moviemakers use artsy symbolism to represent the virtual world in which some of the conflict exists. They also illustrate current events with real news footage (sometimes featuring disturbing images) and the occasional dramatic re-enactment. One of the latter shows the vivid execution of two men with blood effects. As well, a subplot follows a strained romantic relationship that includes implied sexual activity (a man and woman begin undressing each other), along with some sexual references and innuendo.

Another concern for parents considering sharing this film with their teens will be the script’s use of about a half-dozen sexual expletives and a good assortment of other profanities. And this is a shame because the unnecessary language will hamper what I see as the movie’s best use: Stimulating conversation in homes and classrooms on a variety of topics related to media and freedom of information.

So what is fact and what is fiction? Whose secrets should remain confidential and whose should be exposed? Is there such a thing as truth, or only skewed perspectives? The Fifth Estate certainly does leave you asking questions. And when it comes to deciding if Assange’s work makes him a hero or a traitor, the answer will entirely depend on what lens you chose to view him through.

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The fifth estate rating & content info.

Why is The Fifth Estate rated R? The Fifth Estate is rated R by the MPAA for language and some violence.

Violence: Brief explicit violence shows two men shot at point blank range (blood splatters and wounds are shown). News footage includes people being shot, harassed by officials, and civilian deaths in war zones. Characters fear their lives are in danger. Characters engage in illegal activities such as computer hacking and publicly posting classified information. A spy’s life is in peril when he faces exposure. Child abuse is alluded to.

Sexual Content: It is implied an unmarried couple are involved in a sexual relationship. A couple begins embracing, kissing and undressing—but are interrupted. Brief discussions about sex and sexual innuendo are included.

Language: At least six sexual expletives are heard, along with other profanities and terms of deity. Racial slurs are used.

Alcohol / Drug Use: Characters drink frequently, sometimes to relieve stress. Infrequent tobacco use is depicted.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

The Fifth Estate Parents' Guide

Learn more about WikiLeaks , and the real Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg .

The movie is based on Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website , as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding .

Julian Assange corresponded with actor Benedict Cumberbatch earlier in 2013 about the production of this movie. Assange has also posted a detailed list of issues he has with this movie and why the film, from WikiLeaks’ perspective, is “irresponsible, counterproductive and harmful.” (Scroll past the script to the bottom of this lengthy page.)

The most recent home video release of The Fifth Estate movie is January 28, 2014. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: The Fifth Estate

Release Date:  28 January 2014

The Fifth Estate releases to home video (Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy) with the following extras:

- The Submission Platform - Visual Effects: From conception and pre-viz, through on-set photography and post, this featurette explores the VFX challenges of bringing the submission platform to life.

- Scoring Secrets: A detailed examination of the soundscape created by both the composer Carter Burwell as he records his score, and the film’s music supervisor as songs are chosen for the unique soundtrack.

- Theatrical Trailers & TV Spots

Related home video titles:

The Social Network follows the life of another influential website inventor, Mark Zuckerberg the creator of Facebook. Jobs is a dramatic retelling of the biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers. And Breach recounts the efforts of the FBI to catch a secrets seller in their ranks.

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Does It Seem Like the End Times Are Here? These Novels Know Better.

What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse? Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward.

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By Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis’s most recent novel, “The Unsettled,” was published in September.

• April 11, 2024

On the day my mother died, I sat by her bedside and read the Psalms. The room was quiet — the need for machines had passed — save for the sound of my voice and my mother’s labored breathing. Outside her room, the hospital went about its business: Lunch trays were delivered, nurses conferred, a television played too loudly down the corridor. Out there, time passed in its usual, unremarkable way. In her room, my mother and I had stepped off time’s familiar track.

Everything inessential vanished in her final hours. I read the Psalms because they comforted her. I told her I loved her. She squeezed my hand, which, in that afternoon when she was no longer able to speak, was as profound an expression of love as any words had ever been. When she died hours later, I knew that on the other side of her hospital room door there awaited, at least for me, an altered world.

The subject of this essay is apocalypse, and so I have begun with an ending. If you have lost a deeply beloved, then you have experienced the obliterating finality of death, that catastrophe in the small universe of an individual life. The loss also brings a realization: The “worst thing” that could happen is no longer a future projection; it has exploded into the present.

Apocalypse is generally understood as a future event: widespread suffering, extinctions, various iterations of end-time destruction gunning for us from some tomorrow. Out there, in the vast, unknowable not-yet, apocalypse roars. It paralyzes us with fear, deadens us into numbness or provokes us to hysteria. We are powerless in its face.

But what if we could change our relationship with the end by shifting our perspective on it? The first step might be dwelling more profoundly in the here and now where our crises amass, rather than focusing on the boogeyman future. We already know something about how to do this: We are creatures of loss; we have confronted, or will confront, the “worst things” in the real time of our lives. There is a precedent, then, for how, in this moment, we might collectively approach the apocalyptic worst things. While our beloved still lives, there is possibility: We can give her our attention; we can hold her hand.

I won’t downplay the current horrors — tens of thousands dead in Gaza, conflict in Ukraine, the high-stakes presidential election on the horizon — or imply that all will turn out right. The novels in this essay don’t do that either. Instead, they suggest new ways of seeing: a shift to deeper present-time awareness, even wonder, as the times grow ever more dire. The theologian Catherine Keller calls this “apocalyptic mindfulness.” “A cloud of roiling possibility seems to reveal itself,” she writes in “Facing Apocalypse” (2021). “It guarantees no happy ending. It may, however, enhance the uncertain chance of better outcomes.”

Many of our end-time notions are inflected by the biblical Book of Revelation. Its phantasmagoric visions and lurid scenes of destruction have thoroughly infiltrated Western talk of the end: the Four Horsemen, the beast we call the Antichrist (though Revelation doesn’t use the term), fires, plagues and raging pestilence. It may come as a surprise, then, that apokalypsis, the Greek word for “revelation,” means not “ending” but “unveiling.” As Keller writes, “It means not closure but dis-closure — that is, opening. A chance to open our eyes?” But, to what?

In Ling Ma’s novel “ Severance ” (2018), newly pregnant Candace Chen wanders a near-deserted New York City in the midst of a pandemic caused by a disease called Shen Fever. The majority of the city’s residents have fled or become “fevered,” a zombielike state that leaves victims stuck on repeat: a family endlessly setting the table and saying grace; a saleswoman, her jaw half eaten by decay, folding and refolding polo shirts at an abandoned Juicy Couture store on Fifth Avenue. The fevered are the least threatening zombies imaginable: so busy with their mindless performance of mundane tasks that they don’t notice the living. Ma has a knack for nuanced satire.

Candace sticks around because she’s got nowhere else to go; she’s the orphaned child of Chinese immigrants who died years before. Inexplicably, and perhaps somewhat to her dismay, she remains virus-free. As the pandemic shuts down the city, she doggedly persists with her job in the Bibles department at Spectra, a book production company: “I clicked Send, knowing it was fruitless,” she says. When public transportation stops entirely, she moves into her office on the 32nd floor, overlooking an empty Times Square.

It doesn’t take long to understand that a vast grief underlies Candace’s workaholic paralysis. So intense is her mourning for her parents that for a while the pandemic hardly registers. She needs to hold on to something, even pointless work at Spectra. The office setting is no coincidence: In some sense, Candace, too, is fevered, and her job’s rote repetition is a kind of anesthetic.

The dull but familiar grind of late-capitalist working life acts as a numbing agent, or perhaps a blindfold. When work dries up because the rest of the world is no longer at its desk, Candace rambles around the city utterly alone, taking pictures of derelict buildings that she posts on a blog she calls “NY Ghost.” One afternoon she enters a flooded subway station. “You couldn’t even see the water beneath all the garbage,” Ma writes. “The deeper you tunneled down, the bigger the sound, echoed and magnified by the enclosed space, until this primordial slurp was all that existed.” Grieving Candace is adrift, her internal landscape aligned with the desolation of the external world.

Published two years before the Covid pandemic, “Severance” offers an eerily prescient description of a nation shocked and exhausted. For so many, 2020 was a kind of apocalyptic unveiling. The pandemic revealed the fault lines in our health care and our schools, as well as the fact that so many of us were living in perpetual economic precarity. Then there were the deaths, which as a country we have hardly begun to mourn. Painfully and all at once, we understood the fragility of the systems we relied on, and the instability of our own lives.

Yet alongside the devastation there was transient beauty: In many places, air and water quality improved during lockdown and wildlife resurged. Health-care and essential workers were acknowledged and more respected; we realized the extent of our dependence on one another. If only for a little while, we were thrown into Keller’s “apocalyptic mindfulness.” But the eye snapped shut. We “recovered,” and, like Candace, we find ourselves once again in a collective disquiet, punctuated by bouts of terror as we contemplate the future.

On the final afternoon of her wandering, Candace ventures into the same Juicy Couture store she’d photographed weeks before. Ominously, the fevered saleswoman has been bludgeoned to death. Candace’s unborn child seems frightened too: “The baby moved inside of me, fluttering frantically.” Candace leaves Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel in a yellow taxi she’s commandeered from a fevered driver. She joins a band of survivors led by a creepy zealot named Bob, a former I.T. guy who wears a brace for carpal tunnel syndrome, that most banal of white-collar work maladies. They journey to the Chicago suburbs to homestead in a deserted mall. (I told you Ma has a knack for satire.)

In this semi-cult, Candace’s grief intensifies. She begins to have visions of her mother, who warns her that she and her unborn baby aren’t safe with Bob. Candace’s mother is right. Bob has a penchant for shooting the fevered in the head if he encounters them when he and the others go “stalking” for food and supplies. We squirm at these killings, even if the victims are not quite alive, at least not in the usual sense. Bob’s violent demagoguery opens Candace’s eyes to her metaphorically fevered state, and as we look into the mirror the novel holds up to us, we begin to wonder about our relationship to our own beleaguered world.

At last, Candace’s fever breaks and, fully alive, she escapes Bob and the others in a Nissan stolen from the group’s mini-fleet. She drives into once grand Chicago, swerving to avoid abandoned cars clogging Milwaukee Avenue. Finally, she runs out of gas. “Up ahead there’s a massive littered river, planked by an elaborate, wrought-iron red bridge,” she recounts. “Beyond the bridge is more skyline, more city. I get out and start walking.”

The “end” for Candace and her baby is not, in fact, an ending, but rather, an awakening that follows revelation.

If “Severance” chronicles its protagonist’s end-time stirrings from the stupor of grief, Jenny Offill’s novel “ Weather ” (2020) is its manic cousin, a diaristic account of climate anxiety. Narrated in the first person, aggressively present tense and composed of short chapters that leap from association to observation, the book is like a panicked brain in overdrive.

“Weather”’s protagonist, Lizzie, works as a university librarian in New York City. Her former professor, Sylvia, a climate change expert, finagled the gig for her though Lizzie isn’t really qualified. “Years ago, I was her grad student,” Lizzie explains, “but then I gave up on it. She used to check in on me sometimes to see if I was still squandering my promise. The answer was always yes.”

Lizzie is all wry self-deprecation. As the book progresses, we understand that she is less an underachiever than an empath, so often overwhelmed that her focus scrambles. Or perhaps it’s that she is deeply attentive to things we try to ignore. Her experience of the world is the opposite of Candace’s near-impenetrable grief. Lizzie is porous. Too much gets in: grave news about the environment, the plights of relative strangers — like kindly Mr. Jimmy, a car-service owner being run out of business by Uber. Lizzie “helps” by taking Mr. Jimmy’s car to various appointments, though she can’t afford it and the traffic makes her late.

The novel doesn’t so much unfold as tumble out over the course of a turbulent year that encompasses Donald Trump’s election in 2016. After Trump’s win, tensions rise in Lizzie’s Brooklyn neighborhood. Even Mr. Jimmy is spewing casual vitriol about Middle Eastern people and car bombs. Lizzie’s husband, Ben, retreats to the couch, to read a “giant history of war.” And I haven’t even mentioned Henry, Lizzie’s depressive, recovering-addict brother, who meets a woman, marries and has a baby, all at whiplash speed. When the marriage implodes, Henry winds up on Lizzie and Ben’s couch, using again and barely able to parent his daughter.

For Lizzie, as for most of us, personal and collective catastrophes run parallel. Her vision of the future grows ever darker. She talks to Sylvia about buying land somewhere cooler, where Eli, her young son, and Iris, her newborn niece, might fare better in 30 years or so. “Do you really think you can protect them? In 2047?” Sylvia asks.

“I look at her,” Lizzie thinks. “Because until this moment, I did, I did somehow think this.” The realization of her helplessness is unbearable, but Lizzie knows she must bear it: This bleak state of affairs is her son’s inheritance.

Lizzie is gripped by grief and despair — she spends far too much time on doomsday prepper websites — both complicated responses to a planet in the midst of radical, damaging change. “In a world of mortal beings,” Keller writes in “Facing Apocalypse,” “it would seem that without some work of mourning, responsibility for that world cannot develop.” Lizzie’s sense of loss and futility is wrenching, but her response attaches her that much more deeply to this world. Her anxiety is acute because the time in which to act is limited and shot through with urgency.

Lizzie experiences her moment as unprecedented; her end-time sensibility suggests an analogy, albeit to a starkly different context. The Apostle Paul also understood himself to be living through an extraordinary rupture in time. Paul's zeal to spread the Gospel through the ancient world was fueled by his conviction that ordinary time, and life, had been profoundly derailed by Christ’s crucifixion, and was soon to end with his imminent Second Coming. Paul believed he was living in an in-between time that the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has aptly called “ the time that remains ,” a phrase borrowed from Paul’s letter to the fledgling church at Corinth. “The time is short,” Paul wrote. “From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not.”

The old world and its rules had not yet passed away but the prospect of Christ’s return cast an altering light on the present, highlighting the impermanence of all things. Everything was revealed to be in flux and therefore subject to reversals and change.

In “Weather,” Lizzie’s frazzled report from the event horizon of impending disaster, the time that remains means that moments are more precious, less bound by previous rules of engagement and more open to radically new ones. Near the end of the novel, Henry reclaims his sobriety, and Lizzie finds renewed, if melancholic, love for this imperiled world. She wants to find a new way to engage, even as she is uncertain what that might be. “There’s the idea in the different traditions. Of the veil,” Lizzie says. “What if we were to tear through it?” The image recalls Keller’s apokalypsis — a revelatory “ dis-closure .”

Jesmyn Ward’s “ Salvage the Bones ” (2011) takes a very different approach to apocalypse. The novel is set over 12 days, before and just after Hurricane Katrina strikes the Gulf Coast. The 15-year-old narrator, Esch, her father and three brothers live in the Mississippi Delta, outside a coastal town Ward calls Bois Sauvage. Unlike other characters we have encountered, Ward’s need no awakening; and time is far too short for existential anxiety or long-term planning.

The novel opens as China, a pit bull belonging to Esch’s brother Skeetah, is giving birth. Moody, commanding China is the love of Skeetah’s young life and as vivid as any human character in the book. “What China is doing is fighting, like she was born to do,” Ward writes. “Fight our shoes, fight other dogs, fight these puppies that are reaching for the outside, blind and wet.” Skeetah hopes to sell China’s puppies for big money. Enough to send his older brother, Randall, to basketball camp, where, the family hopes, he’ll be noticed by college scouts. Enough, perhaps, to help Esch take care of her baby. Esch is pregnant, though not far enough along to show, and she is in love with the baby’s father, her brother Randall’s friend Manny, who keeps her a secret and won’t kiss her on the mouth.

The novel is full of mothers: mothers to be, absent mothers (Esch’s mother died in childbirth years before), animal mothers, even mythical mothers (Esch is fixated on the avenging Medea, whom she’s read about in school). And, of course, Mother Nature is flying across the gulf, heading straight for Bois Sauvage. Mothers in this novel are makers and destroyers. In some cases, they are also unprepared to occupy the role; they are in jeopardy or else the circumstances of their motherhood run afoul of certain proprieties.

Esch’s pregnancy isn’t easy. It may also be hard for readers to accept: Esch is in dire financial straits and young enough to scandalize some of us. Does the prospect of her motherhood elicit the same empathy as Lizzie’s or Candace’s? Whose children do we think of as the hope for the future when the end is nigh? Which mothers are most valued in the collective perception? Not, generally speaking, an impoverished Black girl barely into her teens.

Ward’s concerns are with those who will bear the brunt of the coming storms, both natural and metaphoric, on the page and in the world. Esch and her family face Katrina with nothing besides a few canned goods they’ve scared up, and some plywood nailed over the doors and windows. Esch herself is the sort of vulnerable person Scripture might refer to as “the least of these.” Each time I read the novel, my mind leaps to the biblical Mary, mother of Jesus, a poor, brown, teenage girl who gave birth in a barn because no safer provision was made for her. In that story, the life least protected turns out to be the most essential.

So it is in “Salvage the Bones”: Esch and her unborn child, along with fighting China and her puppies, are the beating heart of this universe. Here, Esch considers which animals flee before a coming storm: “Maybe the bigger animals do,” she reflects. “Maybe the small don’t run. Maybe the small pause on their branches, the pine-lined earth, nose up, catch that coming storm air that would smell like salt to them, like salt and clean burning fire, and they prepare like us.”

With “the small,” or those treated as such, as focal points, Ward’s novel is also an indictment. It’s true that Katrina was a natural disaster, but its effects were preventable, or might have been mitigated. Most of us remember the levees breaking. The disaster’s aftermath — thousands, mostly poor, stranded without food or water; critically ill patients dying in storm-ravaged hospitals ; desperate, unarmed civilians shot by police officers — was entirely the fault of humans.

We might extend Ward’s insight to end-time crises in general, in which other Esches are similarly left with the greater share of suffering. We may not be able to reverse the crises themselves, but we can intervene in the devastation they cause, and to whom.

We have been down a harrowing road; there isn’t much comfort here. But perhaps at this critical juncture in our human story, it is not comfort that will aid us most. Perhaps what will aid us most is to enter more fully into dis comfort. To awaken to our grief, like Candace. To try to tear through the veil, like Lizzie. In this way we might begin to believe that the future is not foreclosed upon, whatever it might look like.

I leave us with Esch’s declaration of hope at the end of Ward’s novel. Esch’s family has survived, but Skeetah is searching for China, who disappeared in the storm: “He will look into the future and see her emerge into the circle of his fire, beaten dirty by the hurricane so she doesn’t gleam anymore … dull but alive, alive, alive.”

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Cannes Film Festival unveils 2024 Official Selection

By Orlando Parfitt 2024-04-11T08:23:00+01:00

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Source: Searchlight Pictures

‘Kinds Of Kindness’

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 77th edition (May 14-25)

The competition includes films by Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Yórgos Lánthimos, Paul Schrader and Paolo Sorrentino.

Festival director Thierry Frémaux revealed the Official Selection at a press conference at the UGC Normandie theatre in Paris alongside festival president Iris Knobloch.

Previously announced titles include Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act , which  will open the festival on May 14 out of competition, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ,  Kevin Costner’s  Horizon, An American Saga   and   Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis .

Barbie director Greta Gerwig will preside over the jury .

Frémaux said more titles are expected to be added in the coming weeks.

Official Selection 2024

Competition.

• The Apprentice , Ali Abbasi
• Motel Destino , Karim Ainouz
• Bird , Andrea Arnold
• Emilia Perez,  Jacques Audiard
• Anora , Sean Baker
• Megalopolis , Francis Ford Coppola
• The Shrouds , David Cronenberg
• The Substance , Coralie Fargeat
• Grand Tour , Miguel Gomes
• Marcello Mio , Christophe Honoré
• Caught By The Tides , Jia Zhang-Ke
• All We Imagine As Light , Payal Kapadia
• Kinds Of Kindness , Yórgos Lánthimos
• L’amour Ouf , Gilles Lellouche
• Wild Diamond , Agathe Riedinger
• Oh Canada , Paul Schrader
• Limonov - The Ballad , Kirill Serebrennikov
• Parthenope , Paolo Sorrentino
• The Girl With The Needle , Magnus Von Horn

Out Of Competition

• The Second Act , Quentin Dupieux (opening film)
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , George Miller
• Horizon, An American Saga , Kevin Costner
• She’s Got No Name , Peter Chan
• Rumours , Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin

Midnight Screenings

• Twilight Of The Warrior Walled In , Soi Cheang
• I, The Executioner , Seung Wan Ryoo
• The Surfer , Lorcan Finnegan
• The Balconettes , Noémie Merlant

Cannes Premiere

• Miséricorde , Alain Guiraudie
• C’est Pas Moi , Leos Carax
• Everybody Loves Touda , Nabil Ayouch
• The Matching Bang , Emmanuel Courcol
• Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot , Rithy Panh
• Le Roman de Jim , Arnaud Larrieu, Jean-Marie Larrieu 

Special Screenings

• Le Belle De Gaza , Yolande Zauberman
• Apprendre , Claire Simon
• The Invasion , Sergei Loznitsa
• Ernest Cole, Lost And Found , Raoul Peck
• Le Fil , Daniel Auteuil

Un Certain Regard

• Norah , Tawfik Alzaidi
• The Shameless , Konstantin Bojanov
• Le Royaume , Julien Colonna
• Vingt Dieux! , Louise Courvoisier
• Who Let The Dog Bite? , Lætitia Dosch
• Black Dog , Guan Hu
• The Village Next To Paradise , Mo Harawe
• September Says , Ariane Labed
• L’histoire De Souleymane , Boris Lojkine
• The Damned , Roberto Minervini
• On Becoming A Guinea Fow l , Rungano Nyoni
• My Sunshine , Hiroshi Okuyama
• Santosh , Sandhya Suri
• Viet And Nam , Truong Minh Quý
• Armand , Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

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Bookmark this page to keep track of all the latest festival dates.

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CinemaCon: Paramount brings stunning first footage from ‘Gladiator II’ – but where was ‘Mission: Impossible 8’?

2024-04-11T18:43:00Z By Jeremy Kay

New films on the way from Damien Chazelle, Edgar Wright, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Paramount Pictures extends first-look deal with producer Neal H. Moritz’s Original Film

2024-04-11T17:25:00Z By Jeremy Kay

Source: Paramount Pictures Neil Moritz Paramount Pictures has announced a three-year extension its first-look deal with producer Neal H. Moritz and his Original Film. The news came out of Paramount’s CinemaCon presentation at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, where the studio and Miramax announced they ...

Paramount, Miramax moving ahead with 'Scary Movie' franchise

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Announcement came out of CinemaCon on Thursday morning.

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Fully furnished condo inside one of nyc’s most famous hotels heads to auction in may.

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Imagine living at the St. Regis — the chic, old world-style five-star hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 55th Street. Now, a condo there is heading to auction on May 16.

The 11th-floor hotel home at 2 E. 55th St. will have a minimum reserve bid of $3.75 million. That’s quite a loss for the seller, who paid $6.32 million for the residence in 2006, according to property records.

In addition, common charges are a hefty $19,397 a month. 

So what do you get for that price? There’s a kitchen sink, but no oven, although fine dining at the Astor Court is just an elevator ride away. The residence also lacks a full-size fridge, although there is a microwave and two pull-out drawers under a coffee maker that serve as a fridge and a freezer big enough to stash a few pints of your favorite gelato, but not much more.

There are also limitations to the number of days the new owner can stay in the home. They can live in the smashing residence for just 181 days a year, with the option to rent it out for the remainder.

The two-bedroom, three-bath unit is 1,394 square feet. It opens from a semi-private elevator landing and comes fully furnished, with silk walls and marble floors in the baths. Design details include crown moldings, crystal chandeliers and 10-foot-high ceilings.

The luxury hotel has been home to legends like Marilyn Monroe and Salvador Dali. It also has its own iconic hotspot the King Cole Bar, which claims to have invented the world’s first Bloody Mary in 1934, and where generations of locals and tourists flock for pricey cocktails under a Maxfield Parrish-painted mural that dates to 1906. (It was moved to the St. Regis from the Knickerbocker in 1932; both hotels were owned by John Jacob Astor IV.)

Unit owners also have access to hotel amenities such as a 19th-floor gym, room service, nightly turn-down service, daily housekeeping (for an additional fee) and a salon. 

Astor built the hotel in 1904.

Auction bids will be accepted until the day of the auction, says Paramount Realty USA founder Misha Haghani, who has partnered with Compass listing broker Bill Bone to sell the unit. 

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‘the night manager’ revived at bbc, amazon with two-season pickup.

Tom Hiddleston will reprise his role as the lead character in the thriller.

By Rick Porter

Rick Porter

Television Writer

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Amazon and the BBC are teaming to revive the Emmy- and BAFTA-winning thriller The Night Manager , eight years after its initial run.

Tom Hiddleston will reprise his role in the show, which scored a two-season order from the BBC and Amazon’s Prime Video streaming platform. Series creator David Farr is also set to return as writer. Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, who starred in the first season, will also be executive producers.

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“The first series of  The Night Manager  was one of the most creatively fulfilling projects I have ever worked on,” Hiddleston said in a statement. “The depth, range and complexity of Jonathan Pine was, and remains, a thrilling prospect. I’m so looking forward to reuniting with [The Ink Factory’s] Simon and Stephen Cornwell, David Farr and [EP] Stephen Garrett, and to working with Georgi Banks-Davies to tell the next chapter of our story. I can’t wait.”

The Night Manager first aired on the BBC in the U.K. and AMC in the United States and followed Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston), a former British soldier and night manager of a hotel in Cairo who’s recruited to help take down an arms dealer (Laurie). The first season also starred Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki. It was nominated for 12 Emmys and won two (including one for director Susanne Bier) and also won three BAFTA TV awards.

The series will air on BBC One and iPlayer in the U.K. and Prime Video in the rest of the world. Fifth Season, which negotiated the deal, is handling worldwide distribution.

Farr, Hiddleston, Laurie, Simon and Stephen Cornwell, Garrett and Banks-Davies executive produce The Night Manager with Joe Tsai and Arthur Wang for 127 Wall; Michele Wolkoff and Tessa Inkelaar for The Ink Factory; Adrián Guerra for Nostromo Pictures; William D. Johnson for Demarest Films; and Nick Cornwell, Susanne Bier, Fifth Season’s Chris Rice and the BBC’s Gaynor Holmes.

Hiddleston is repped by Hamilton Hodell in the U.K., UTA, Johnson Shapiro and Prosper PR. Farr is repped by UTA in the states and Curtis Brown Group Ltd. in the U.K. The estate of John le Carré is repped by Curtis Brown Group Ltd. Banks-Davies is repped by LARK, Independent Talent Group and CAA.

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Soccer | Alyssa Naeher makes 3 saves in shootout as…

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Soccer | Alyssa Naeher makes 3 saves in shootout as United States edges Canada for SheBelieves Cup title

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Alyssa Naeher made three saves in a penalty shootout and converted her own attempt to lead the United States past Canada on Tuesday night in the final of the SheBelieves Cup, the Americans’ fifth straight title in the event.

The U.S. won the shootout 5-4 after the rivals played to a 2-2 draw in regulation. Emily Fox scored the decisive goal in the seventh round of the shootout after Naeher stopped Evelyne Viens.

Sophia Smith scored both U.S. goals. Her first tied the game at 1-all in the 50th minute. Her second put the Americans ahead 2-1 in the 68th off a cross from Trinity Rodman, who was subbed in only minutes before.

Adriana Leon scored twice for Canada. She made it 1-0 in the 40th minute, and tied the game at 2-all when she converted a penalty in the 86th.

It was the 66th meeting between between the teams, with the U.S. leading the series 54-4-8. The last meeting was last month in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, with the Americans advancing to the final on penalties after a rain-soaked 2-2 draw.

The SheBelieves Cup matches were the last for the team under interim coach Twila Kilgore. Emma Hayes is set to take over for the next two games on the schedule, exhibitions against South Korea in June. Kilgore will remain on Hayes’ staff.

Mallory Swanson, who started the United States’ 2-1 victory over Japan in the SheBelieves opener on Saturday, came on as a substitute to start the second half. Swanson was sidelined for a year after injuring her patellar tendon during an exhibition against Ireland last year. The injury kept her out of last summer’s Women’s World Cup, in which the Americans were eliminated by Sweden in the round of 16.

Naomi Girma did not play after she was subbed off in the first half of the opener with an apparent thigh injury.

Korbin Albert made her second straight appearance as a substitute following a controversy over past social media posts. The 20-year-old, who plays for Paris Saint-Germain, had reposted anti-LGBTQ+ content on her TikTok account.

Albert apologized, saying “liking and sharing posts that are offensive, insensitive and hurtful was immature and disrespectful which was never my intent.”

Alex Morgan addressed the issue last week, noting the team was handling it internally. The U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association issued a statement earlier Tuesday.

“The women’s soccer community is one of joy, excitement, kindness and love. We have worked to ensure our community is safe, inclusive and welcoming to everyone. As allies and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, those efforts will not stop,” the statement said.

Brazil took third place, beating Japan 3-0 in a penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw in the earlier match at Lower.com Field. Goalkeeper Lorena saved all three penalty attempts by Japan.

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• Environment

Environmentalists protest as Biden administration approves huge oil export terminal off Texas coast

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a move that environmentalists called a betrayal, the Biden administration has approved the construction of a deepwater oil export terminal off the Texas coast that would be the largest of its kind in the United States.

The Sea Port Oil Terminal being developed off Freeport, Texas, will be able to load two supertankers at once, with an export capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. The $1.8 billion project by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners received a deepwater port license from the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration this week, the final step in a five-year federal review.

Environmentalists denounced the license approval, saying it contradicted President Joe Biden’s climate agenda and would lead to “disastrous” planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to nearly 90 coal-fired power plants. The action could jeopardize Biden’s support from environmental allies and young voters already disenchanted by the Democratic administration’s approval last year of the massive Willow oil project in Alaska.

“Nothing about this project is in alignment with President Biden’s climate and environmental justice goals,” said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks, an environmental group that has long opposed the export terminal.

“The communities that will be impacted by (the oil terminal) have once again been ignored and will be forced to live with the threat of more oil spills, explosions and pollution,” Crane said. “The best way to protect the public and the climate from the harms of oil is to keep it in the ground.”

In a statement after the license was approved, the Maritime Administration said the project meets a number of congressionally mandated requirements, including extensive environmental reviews and a federal determination that the port’s operation is in the national interest.

“While the Biden-Harris administration is accelerating America’s transition to a clean energy future, action is also being taken to manage the transition in the near term,” said the agency, which is nicknamed MARAD.

The administration’s multiyear review included consultation with at least 20 federal, state and local agencies, MARAD said. The agency ultimately determined that the project would have no significant effect on the production or consumption of U.S. crude oil.

“Although the (greenhouse gas) emissions associated with the upstream production and downstream end use of the crude oil to be exported from the project may represent a significant amount of GHG emissions, these emissions largely already occur as part of the U.S. crude oil supply chain,” the agency said in an email to The Associated Press. “Therefore, the project itself is likely to have minimal effect on the current GHG emissions associated with the overall U.S. crude oil supply chain.”

Environmental groups scoffed at that claim.

“The Biden administration must stop flip-flopping on fossil fuels,” said Cassidy DiPaola of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group that opposes the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

“Approving the Sea Port Oil Terminal after pausing LNG exports is not just bad news for our climate, it’s incoherent politics,” DiPaola said. Biden “can’t claim to be a climate leader one day and then turn around and grant a massive handout to the oil industry the next. It’s time for President Biden to listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who want to see a shift away from fossil fuels, not a doubling down on dirty and deadly energy projects.”

DiPaola was referring to the administration’s January announcement that it is delaying consideration of new natural gas export terminals in the United States, even as gas shipments to Europe and Asia have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The decision, announced at the start of the 2024 presidential election year, aligned the Democratic president with environmentalists who fear the huge increase in exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions even as Biden has pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

Industry groups and Republicans have condemned the pause, saying LNG exports stabilize global energy markets, support thousands of American jobs and reduce global greenhouse emissions by transitioning countries away from coal, a far dirtier fossil fuel.

Enterprise CEO Jim Teague hailed the oil project’s approval. The terminal will provide “a more environmentally friendly, safe, efficient and cost-effective way to deliver crude oil to global markets,” he said in a statement.

The project will include two pipelines to carry crude from shore to the deepwater port, reducing the need for ship-to-ship transfers of oil. The terminal is expected to begin operations by 2027.

Since the project was first submitted for federal review in 2019, “Enterprise has worked diligently with various federal, state and local authorities, and participated in multiple public meetings that have allowed individuals and stakeholder groups to learn about the project and provide their comments,” including some studies that have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese, the company said in a statement. More than half of Freeport’s 10,600 residents are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hailed the license approval as “a major victory for Texas’s energy industry” and said the Biden administration had delayed the Sea Port terminal and other projects for years.

“After tireless work by my office and many others to secure this deepwater port license, I’m thrilled that we’re helping bring more jobs to Texas and greater energy security to America and our allies,” Cruz said in a statement. “That this victory was delayed by years of needless bureaucratic dithering shows why we need broader permitting reform in this country.”

The oil export facility, one of several license applications under federal review, is located 30 miles offshore of Brazoria County, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The license approval followed a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week dismissing claims by environmental groups that federal agencies had failed to uphold federal environmental laws in their review of the project.

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Scouting Mavericks-Clippers: Stage set for Round 3 between Luka Doncic, Kawhi Leonard

The mavs will open the first round of the nba playoffs against la for the third time in five years after clinching the division title on wednesday..

By Mike Curtis

8:00 AM on Apr 11, 2024 CDT

It’s official. The Mavericks and L.A. Clippers will meet for Round 3 of a first-round playoff series.

Luka Doncic . Kawhi Leonard. Kyrie Irving . Paul George. James Harden. Russell Westbrook.

It’s a star-studded matchup that could wind up being billed as one of the most intriguing first-round playoff series due to the historical context between the two teams.

Dallas will open the first round of the postseason against the Clippers for the third time in five years after the Mavericks clinched the Southwest Division title following Wednesday’s 111-92 win at Miami.

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Related: ‘The real MVP’? Luka Doncic builds his case, leads Mavericks to win No. 50

The Mavericks (50-30) did not have home-court advantage for either of the last two times they faced the Clippers (51-29) in the playoffs in 2020 and 2021. They have an outside chance to host their first-round playoff series at American Airlines Center if they win their final two regular games against Detroit and Oklahoma City. However, their seeding fate isn’t solely in their own hands. They’ll need some help from the Clippers, who need to lose their final two games to Utah and Houston in order to fall to the fifth seed.

A Dallas loss or Clippers win between now and April 14 guarantees the first game of the series being held at Crypto.com Arena.

So who has the advantage? Here’s an early scouting report of the series, which also includes a look at the three-game regular season series that fell in L.A.’s favor:

Previous meetings

The Mavericks and Clippers had three meetings within the first two months of the regular season, a time that may no longer be relevant due to the substantial roster changes made by Dallas at the trade deadline. L.A. won the series 2-1, but that was before the Mavericks bolstered their frontcourt by acquiring Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington.

On Nov. 10, the Mavericks lit up the scoreboard with a 144-126 win over the Clippers at the AAC thanks to a performance of 44 points and six assists by Doncic. The stakes were high since it was an In-Season Tournament game, but it was also a feel-out game for L.A. since it was the third straight game since Harden joined the team after an ugly separation from Philadelphia.

L.A. took the next two games on Nov. 25 and Dec. 20 . It didn’t matter if the game was held on the road or at home. The Mavericks couldn’t contain George in the second meeting, and he led the Clippers to a 107-88 victory. George scored 25 points with nine rebounds. Leonard produced a 30-point outing to lead the Clippers to a 120-111 win on Dallas’ home floor. It was the ninth consecutive win for L.A., which was halted by a two-game skid to the Thunder and Boston Celtics.

The Clippers defeated the Mavericks in seven games during the 2021 playoffs . Doncic erupted for 46 points, seven rebounds and 14 assists in Game 7, but Dallas didn’t have enough firepower to compete with the Clippers’ depth. Leonard flirted with a triple-double of 28 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists to lead the Clippers to a 126-111 victory.

In the 2020 bubble, Dallas lost in six games, but Doncic’s playoff debut was a memorable one: He drained a stepback 3-pointer at the buzzer to help the Mavericks win Game 4.

LUKA CALLED GAME pic.twitter.com/g7URYgcAoE — Dallas Mavericks (@dallasmavs) August 23, 2020

This playoff series has six potential Hall of Fame-caliber players between both teams, which certainly increases the entertainment factor. But what happens when the ball is finally tipped into the air?

The potent offensive duo of Doncic and Irving should be able to match the scoring punch from L.A.’s leading scorers in Leonard and George. Harden and Westbrook aren’t producing the MVP-level stat lines of yesteryear, but they are still capable of a signature performance if the opportunity presents itself.

Health is going to be one of the main factors for L.A. All four of the aforementioned Clippers missed Wednesday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns. George had left knee soreness. Leonard has missed the last six games due to right knee inflammation. Harden was out due to right foot inflammation. Westbrook is dealing with a left hand contusion.

Meanwhile, Doncic and Irving could be due for rest during the final two games of the season, especially since Detroit enters Friday’s matchup with the worst record in the NBA. A lengthy Mavericks postseason run will depend on the health of their two best players. Meanwhile, other players such as Gafford, Washington and Tim Hardaway Jr. will need to fill in the gaps as supplementary options, especially while Josh Green works himself back into form coming off an ankle injury.

Who has the edge?

It’s difficult to factor in the regular season matchups because of the Mavericks’ mid-season additions, but Dallas has a realistic opportunity to avenge the playoff losses in 2020 and 2021 and advance to the second round. It’ll come down to health and the cohesion between Doncic and Irving, along with game-to-game coaching adjustments from Jason Kidd in order to advance to the conference semifinals.

Twitter/X: @MikeACurtis2

Find more Mavericks coverage from The Dallas Morning News here .

Mike Curtis , Mavericks Beat Writer

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