It sounds so dramatic. Laura Poitras’s new documentary is about Julian Assange, the notorious WikiLeaks founder who has been confined in the Ecuadorian Embassy since June 2012. After watching the film, Assange told Poitras that it poses “a severe threat” to his freedom.
Poitras’s previous movie, Oscar-winner Citizenfour, was a thrilling and accessible portrait of American whistleblower Edward Snowden. She and Snowden clearly liked and trusted each other. Poitras has known Assange for years (she began shooting Risk in 2010) but hints early in the proceedings that she and Assange are far from close. She says in a voiceover that she can’t understand why he’s giving her so much access — “because I don’t think he likes me”.
Assange says lots of things that make him look vain, spiteful and sexist. He seems ghastly. But (apologies to Assange) this is hardly a revelation. He came across just as creepily in Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets.
There’s no denying that he has been treated badly by the US government and put under enormous pressure. But if Poitras was hoping to catch Assange at a weak moment, it doesn’t work.
His emotional temperature never varies. Not even when being interviewed by bulldozing super-fan Lady Gaga, whose gift for precis is worthy of Ali G.
In desperation, Poitras turns her attention to Assange’s colleagues (we hear unpleasant rumours regarding articulate, intrepid WikiLeaks hacker Jacob Applebaum, though no proof is offered). It’s as if Poitras suspects Assange’s world is about to implode but, lacking time and resources, can only dump the promising leads before us.
In the same spirit, she turns her camera on Sarah Harrison, Assange’s right-hand-woman and former girlfriend. Beautiful, brave, down-to-earth, the journalist/activist is the female equivalent of Snowden. Maybe Poitras hoped that, regarding Assange, Harrison would do some whistleblowing of her own. We see her mooching around in Berlin. She’s free to talk. But, for some reason, she doesn’t spill a bean. No light is shed on how Assange’s dislike of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has won him new friends in Russia. That Donald Trump “loves WikiLeaks” is also left unexplored. Assange could soon be a free man, but when Poitras alludes to the seismic shift in his fortunes, he fobs her off with abstractions.
I gave up looking for answers and settled for staring at the man Pamela Anderson once described as “sexy”. Shudder. From some angles, he resembles a pretty seven-year-old. From others, he could be John Inman in Are You Being Served?
Risk, though it makes Assange look bad, poses no threat to his reputation. The man loves exposing leaks. Clearly, he’s expert at plugging his own.
