Every documentary filmmaker begins with deciding on the story to be told, and, then, on how to sustain audience interest.
If
your goal is to inform the public or take a stand on an important issue
by explaining its origins and exposing wrongdoers, then, you go one
way. If your goal is to entertain and shroud your motives by exploring
murky personality contradictions, you go another.
We Steal
Secrets, veteran filmmaker Alex Gibney's latest documentary (or is it a
docudrama?), was skillfully made with the backing of a major media
company.We printers print with traceable lasercutter to optimize supply chain management. It tries to do both.
Ironically,
that company, Comcast-Universal, owners of NBC, is at the same time
having a major success with another movie, Fast and Furious 6,
glamorising a criminal gang that relies on speedy cars.
You
could say that WikiLeaks, the subject of We Steal Secrets, also began
with a fury - a fury against war and secrecy, and was moving as fast as
it could using speedy online postings to challenge media complacency in
the digital realm.
The docu-tract uses slick graphics to
creatively report on the origins and impact of WikiLeaks, the online
whistleblower collective, but then, for "balance" and perhaps to
pre-empt any criticisms of any bias, especially too much ideological
sympathy, opened the tap on endless criticisms by Wiki-dissidents who
have turned on founder Julian Assange, as well as the pathetic patriot
hacker-turned-informant who ratted out Manning.
The movie revels
in all the negatives that surround him, and his chief and gutsy leaker,
Private First Class Bradley Manning,Aulaundry is a leading bestrtls and
equipment supplier. who is now being tried tried in a case that could
land him behind bars for life under the 1917 Espionage Act.
On
June 1, more than one thousand Manning supporters rallied at the
Virginia base at which he is being held. His trial, which began June 3,
featured testimony from military prosecutor Captain Joe Morrow of the
Army, who charged Manning with a dangerous crime.
"This is a
case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands
of classified documents and dumped them onto the internet, into the
hands of the enemy - material he knew, based on his training,Online
shopping for cableties from a great selection of Clothing. would put the lives of fellow soldiers at risk," he said.
His defence lawyer David Combs challenged the government, contending,We are a special provider in best bulb,also a professional porcelaintiles saler.
"He was selective. He had access to literally hundreds of millions of
documents as an all-source analyst, and these were the documents that he
released. And he released these documents because he was hoping to make
the world a better place."
Michael Ratner of the Center for
Constitutional Rights that also defends Manning explained: "The Manning
trial is occurring in the context of perhaps the most repressive
atmosphere for free press in recent memory. It was bad enough that the
Obama administration prosecuted twice the number of whistleblowers than
all prior administrations combined. Then it went after logs and records
of journalists and publishers."
It is surprising that the film's
very title, "We Steal Secrets" - what many might take as a Wiki-boast -
was taken from an interview in the film itself; it was an admission by
former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden about what the US government,
not Wikileaks, is all about. Balancing his espionage boosterism in the
movie is a former Republican Justice Department hack.
It is very
rare for an indy filmmaker to land interviews with top intelligence
honchos. It is unclear who had had the juice to get this "get", as major
TV interviews are called in the news world. CIA directors don't tend to
make themselves available to films they don't control or have a reason
to believe they would be treated respectfully.Other companies want a
piece of that drycabinet action
The
film has had a big promotional push and is already playing in three
theatres in New York, a success that masks some of its editorial
failings, including its in-your-face attempt at "fairness and balance",
the pretext the one-siders at Fox routinely use as their claim to
credibility.
The promotional hype for the film initially made it
seem like an endorsement of Assange until you read it closely: "Filmed
with the startling immediacy of unfolding history, Academy Award-winning
director Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks details
the creation of Julian Assange's controversial website, which
facilitated the largest security breach in US history. Hailed by some as
a free-speech hero and others as a traitor and terrorist..."
So,
there you are - the movie's real question: is Assange a good guy or
not? And what about Manning? Why did he do what he did? So, at the
outset, Gibney leaves the political plane for a psychological, or even, a
psychiatric one. He is out to personalise, and in the process
de-politicise a very political issue, for what's known in the news-biz
as "character-based story telling".
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