The Fifth Estate, Hollywood's big-budget take on the WikiLeaks saga, opens with a TED-worthy montage depicting the development of communication technology from cave scrapings to iPads. The inclusion of WikiLeaks in our species's evolutionary course may seem a bit presumptuous, but it's not completely off-base. Whatever you think of Julian Assange's approach to the unencumbered flow of classified information, WikiLeaks has had a lasting affect on the world—probably for the better.
In the pantheon of recent tech dramatizations, The Fifth Estate ranks as one of the better ones—definitely more Social Network than Jobs. Based partly on former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domcheit-Berg's tell-all book, the film centers on WikiLeaks' rise from startup to global troublemaker.
Yet the film's central conflict is less about WikiLeaks versus the powers-that-be than about the beef between Domcheit-Berg and Assange that eventually caused a rift in the organization. The film's source material alone may explain why the real Assange has vehemently disputed the movie's accuracy.
Last January the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Assange in the movie, tried to meet with the WikiLeaks founder in person. Cumberbatch was rebuffed in a polite yet pointed email (subsequently leaked) in which Julian describes The Fifth Estate as being "based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organization."
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