Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Julian Assange, Sarah Harrison, Jacob Appelbaum
Intro:
"...an open-ended documentary which asks or implies at least as many important questions as it answers."
This is, perhaps inevitably given its subject, an open-ended documentary which asks or implies at least as many important questions as it answers. Laura Poitras, whose previous project Citizenfour was about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, focuses here on Julian Assange, and takes her title from his comment that “I don’t believe in martyrdom… but I do believe that people should take risks”.
Assange is at once one of the world’s most famous people and one of its more mysterious, not least in terms of his motivation: we’re made to ponder whether it’s a desire to improve the world, the love of power or perhaps a combination of the two. Just to add to the ambivalence, Poitras herself – who shot the doco over six long years and in multiple locations – reveals an eventual falling-out between herself and “Julian”, and says “It’s a mystery to me why he trusts me – because I don’t think he likes me”.
The action – and indeed the enforced inaction, since Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy – moves between England, Cairo, Washington D.C., Berlin and Hong Kong, and concerns not only Assange himself but to a far lesser extent Wikileaks’s other major players, including its affiliate Jacob Appelbaum (himself the subject of sexual misconduct allegations). Filming began in the aftermath of the leaking of 700,000 (!) U.S. military and state documents, and its scope encompasses both the globally political and – somewhat to Assange’s evident irritation – the individually personal. He makes highly dubious jokes, is interviewed by (of all people) Lady Gaga, and in one telling scene – whilst sitting in a woodland clearing – gets nervous about noises which turn out to be the mere twittering of birds. The tension, fear and quasi-paranoia are both palpable and understandable.
