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There may be no more perplexing character in recent history than Julian Assange, the mercurial co-founder of the secret-telling website WikiLeaks.
Assange is a hero to some for revealing the embarrassing details of foreign policy and wartime activities that major governments would rather keep quiet. He's a villain to officials of those governments, who claim the disclosures he has made threaten the lives of people in military and intelligence agencies. And still others, like the current administration, love WikiLeaks when Assange is slagging Democrats, but are eager to slap him in jail when the GOP is the target.
Filmmaker Laura Poitras, who risked her freedom telling the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oscar-winning "Citizenfour," finds herself seeing Assange from both sides in "Risk," a documentary as confounding as its subject.
Poitras captured Assange's life in up-close-and-personal detail over six years, off and on, starting in 2011. She starts out as an admirer of his work with WikiLeaks, but finds him increasingly hard to trust.
The movie starts with Assange trying to help the U.S. State Department. It's 2011, and he's trying to get in a call to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (foreshadowing!) to let her know about a bit of a problem coming her way: Someone has hacked into WikiLeaks' computers and is about to release unredacted versions of emails that Assange and his editor, Sarah Harrison, had published with names and other sensitive details removed. At some point, Poitras is saying, Assange tried to be a responsible journalist.
Not long after, the story becomes about Assange himself, with accusations that he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden. Assange says the charges are phony, a fabrication designed to discredit WikiLeaks' work by attacking him. He fights extradition from the U.K. to Sweden for questioning, arguing that it would give the United States the chance to intercept him and try him for espionage.
As the movie unspools, it becomes evident that Assange's misogyny is intense, as he speaks dismissively about his Swedish accusers, Clinton, and the women who work for WikiLeaks. He's even rude to Lady Gaga, whose 2012 interview with him — done in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he is still living in sanctuary from British police — becomes the high-water mark for comic relief in Poitras' movie.
As Poitras spends more time in the WikiLeaks orbit, she finds it harder to retain her journalistic distance. In the movie, she reads from her personal production journal, describing bad dreams in which Assange appears. When one of Assange's acolytes, computer expert and journalist Jacob Applebaum, is accused of sexually harassing women, Poitras is forced to acknowledge that she had a relationship with him in 2014 — and that a friend of hers said Applebaum bullied her.
Assange's egomania eventually strikes back at Poitras, because he is unhappy with how "Risk" — which Poitras was editing right up to its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last month — was depicting him. (He also seems to be envious that she was called away from covering him when she received the anonymous email from Snowden that launched the odyssey she depicted in "Citizenfour.")
Poitras does give us in "Risk" an inside look at how WikiLeaks devolved from a cause célèbre for global activists to a conduit of Assange's anger and the whims of whoever was supplying him information. If Poitras fails in explaining all of Assange's contradictions, that says more about his secretive character than about her journalistic skills.
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'Risk'
Filmmaker Laura Poitras tries to profile Julian Assange, but finds him a tough subject to nail down.
Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas.
When • Opens Friday, May 12.
Rating • Not rated, but probably R for language, sexual references and combat images.
Running time • 92 minutes.