Director Alex Gibney’s (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the
Room”, Taxi to the Dark Side”) documentary, “We Steal Secrets” (2013) prods along the
familiar story of WikiLeaks and its founder ‘Julian Assange.’ But, this
documentary not only stitches together a story we think we already know, but
also explores more complex problems and asks some difficult questions. The sole
purpose of a group like WikiLeaks is to expose secrets and to inspire a
generation of whistle-blowers. But, what happens when the exposers have their
own personal demons neatly tucked away? Alex Gibney is fair and evenhanded. He
talks to detractors, former co-workers and also supporters. He also deals with
another entirely polarizing figure – the lesser known Bradley manning.
The 130 minute David-Goliath-like story starts in 1989. NASA
is geared up to launch a plutonium-powered Jupiter probe. A group of Australian
hackers hit NASA’s systems with a WANK ("worms against nuclear
killers") worm. A then-teenage Assange was believed to be part of those
anonymous attackers. As a young activist, he committed himself to “crushing
bastards” (as he himself says) through a galaxy of cyber passageways and
trapdoors. He eventually assembled a team of ideal ‘hacktivists’ that
intercepted and revealed secret Icelandic banking documents, U.S. diplomatic
cables, Afghan and Iraq war logs. And so, the eager, charismatic Assange is
martyred by his supporters. Yet, we don’t know much about Manning, the geeky
intelligence analyst who provided Assange with most daring cache of documents
and is now serving 35 year sentence in a federal prison.
One of the mystery often intrigues a news reader is how
Manning has access to so much Intel. The reason is very well explained here.
Manning was a loner and among other things he repeatedly began to identify
himself as a woman. He was devastated by his actions, and so to seek approval
for his actions, he established a chat with hacker Adrian Lamo. Lamo, who
himself was in a state of quandary revealed Manning’s identify to FBI,
eventually resulting in incarceration and torture.
One of the great aspects of this documentary is, director
Gibney brings in accusers, associates, few ex-CIA, NSA men and even Barack
Obama's State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley for an interview. When Gibney
shows Assange’s earlier action – exposing the video of American gunship pilots
mowing down Reuters journalists – we feel that this guy stands only for the
truth. But, the sexual assault charges and his act of making associates sign a
nondisclosure agreement (that includes a multimillion-dollar penalty) makes us
wonder that does he still stand for veracity or is he some overgrown teenager,
who just likes to rebel against any authority.
Director Alex Gibney and James Ball (former employee of WikiLeaks) |
The popular opinion about the two sexually assaulted women
is that they are set up by CIA. It’s an alluring assumption, but Gibney’s
interview with one of the accuser makes us think a lot. Further interviews with
former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg and ‘Guardian’ journalist Nick
Davies paints us a portrait of a man, who is distanced from real life to really
care about what damage he might do.
Gibney is highly sympathetic to the fate of Manning. He
hasn’t interviewed both of the main subjects (Assange wouldn't cooperate after
the director sought an on-camera interview), but we can feel his shifting
feelings for Manning. Assange is now living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London
trying to avoid extradition to Sweden, whereas, Manning has suffered lots of
tortures and arguably a whistleblower in the purest sense of the word, even
though what he did was treason in the eyes of his own country. Even some
Defense Department officials appear surprisingly sympathetic to the torture of
Manning.
The prolific Oscar winning film-maker sprawls various
materials, but eventually makes us experience the full scope of this scary,
ugly story. The film is a little long, since Gibney explore new avenues and
incorporates new materials rather than being fixed on a single subject.
However, all those portions finally raise provocative questions about the
limits of loyalty and responsibility.
WikiLeaks supporters and Assange has denounced “We Steal
Secrets.” It’s an irony, since the same man insisted that all information is
good information. It’s not an easy task to achieve what Assange has achieved,
but at the same time we are subtly insisted that he too is a fallible-human
being.
Trailer
Rated R for some disturbing violent images, language and
sexual material
4 comments:
I love documentary films. Added to the list.
Great review there mate. The documentary sounds interesting. Actually anything related to Assange sounds interesting
I would like to watch this movie. Will it come to Indian Cinema?
@ Satya Prakash, I don't think this this docu will come to India. Documentaries don't even get a limited release here.
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