Between the release of Jobs this summer and the premiere of The Fifth Estate at TIFF, it would seem that many more films influenced directly by The Social Network will make their way to screens in the coming years. The formula itself seems pretty similar to the political movies that HBO has been making for years: using a recent news event, build a level of verisimilitude between the movie and the real people that audiences just might confuse one for the other. Thus, we have The Fifth Estate, starring Benedict Cumberbatch with an awful wardrobe, an Australian accent, and the shocking white hair of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The Fifth Estate is nominally a movie about the changing of the guard, the shift from one form of mass media (print), to the next (internet), and how this affects more than just the distribution of the news. Assange thought he had found a way to keep sources absolutely safe, or at least his employees thought he did, until Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning was arrested. Ironically, to tell the story of a new generation of journalism, the producers of The Fifth Estate hired Bill Condon, who is best known for directing the solid–but highly un-revolutionary–Hollywood musical Dreamgirls. The Fifth Estate is a movie about the new guard made by the old guard, and the old guard doesn’t really know what it’s talking about.
Condon uses a lot of flashy techniques to tell his story, lots of moving hand held cameras, fast cuts, over-designed title cards, but he applies them uncomfortably. Unlike David Fincher with The Social Network, Condon can’t fall back on a quip-filled Aaron Sorkin screenplay. Instead, Josh Singer’s screenplay acts as a Greatest Hits of WikiLeaks, drawing from the tell-all book of Daniel Berg (played by Daniel Brühl in the movie), shoe-horning awkward facts of Assange’s life (he was raised in a cult! He abandoned his son! He dyes his hair white!) and inter-media conflict into the narrative when he should have let the story tell itself.
For schedule and ticket details go to tiff.net
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Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.
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