Risk – first look review

At a time when the British press is harangu­ing about an injunc­tion into a celebri­ty three­some, we can take heart in the fact that Lau­ra Poitras’ lat­est film shows the vital role that jour­nal­ism still plays in shap­ing the nar­ra­tive around major world events. Espe­cial­ly when it dares, for a change, to be risky.

Her doc­u­men­tary, an impres­sion­is­tic por­trait of Julian Assange and Wik­iLeaks, plays out as 10 episodes in the life of Assange over the last five years – from the 2010 Cable­gate leaks to being cooped up in the Ecuadore­an embassy in cen­tral Lon­don. Risk is a con­tex­tu­al com­pan­ion piece to her meati­er, Oscar-win­ning Cit­i­zen­four. It doesn’t boast that film’s grip­ping in-the-moment ecsta­sy, nor is Assange – still under inves­ti­ga­tion in Swe­den for sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions – as engag­ing a screen pres­ence as Snow­den. It does, how­ev­er, retain Citizenfour’s fly-on-the-wall, con­spir­a­cy thriller style while demon­strat­ing Poitras’ knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Risk is best viewed as a char­ac­ter study of Assange rather than a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of his role as edi­tor-in-chief of Wik­iLeaks. Scenes flit between the seri­ous – includ­ing a Kaf­ka-esque talk about leaks with a rep from Hillary Clinton’s State Depart­ment – and more brac­ing­ly light­weight. Lady Gaga turns up for a trip­py inter­view (“what’s your favourite food?”), although this uneven ten­den­cy serves as a weak com­par­i­son with the rig­or­ous focus of Citizenfour.

A high­light is a sur­re­al sequence that reveals how Assange got into the embassy dis­guised as a bik­er. Poitras shoots from the back seat as he races through the streets of Lon­don with reck­less aban­don – as illu­mi­nat­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file of the real Assange as you’re ever like­ly to see. These loose scenes do give rise to frus­tra­tions about the film’s omis­sions, most notably the alle­ga­tions made against Assange. But Poitras does man­age to cap­ture Assange mak­ing a misog­y­nis­tic gaffe when he says the Swedish women who brought the case should drop it to save them­selves from being ​“reviled for­ev­er by a large seg­ment of the population.”

These alle­ga­tions clear­ly aren’t the director’s con­cern – she appears to large­ly agree with Wik­iLeaks edi­tor Sarah Harrison’s assess­ment that they serve to dis­tract the pub­lic from the organisation’s work, which may deter­mine whether or not audi­ences embrace the film. But it does leave you con­sid­er­ing the risks Snow­den and Chelsea Man­ning did take, and the ones Assange won’t: he refus­es to fly to Swe­den for fear of extra­di­tion to the USA. ​“I don’t believe in mar­tyrs,” he offers, ​“but peo­ple should take risks.”