A partir dos escândalos, escreveram livros sobre Julian Assange. Uns mais próximos da verdade e outros o denegrindo e deturpando os fatos.
Aí a Dreamworks de Steven Spielberg bancou um filme, contratou Bill Condon para dirigi-lo (autor da saga adolescente Twilight e outras mais), um elenco europeu de primeira e convenceram Benedict Cumberbatch (o Sherlock do excelente seriado homônimo da BBC e estrela ascendente do cinema britânico) a endossar o papel de Julian Assange, o também ótimo ator alemão Daniel Brühl (que ascendeu ao estrelato com o imperdível "Adeus Lenin") para endossar o de Domscheit-Berg, e outros atores ingleses de qualidade, e pronto.
Benedict, bom ator aplicado, estudou Julian a fundo e quem conhece ambos percebe o sucesso da semelhança. Consciencioso e instruído, o ator shakespeareano tentou também encontrar o protagonista do WikiLeaks várias vezes, em vão. Este recusou por discordar da abordagem do filme e explicou o porquê em carta pessoal, mais tarde, aberta - mais ou menos.
Benedict, que aos 37 anos já tem uma longa carreira teatral e televisual na Inglaterra, explicou que após receber a missiva tentou aproximar-se da realidade ao máximo e que não é marionete de ninguém. "He [Assange] accuses me of being a 'hired gun' as if I am an easily bought cypher for right-wing propaganda. Not only I do not operate in a moral vacuum but this was not a pay day for me at all. I wanted to create a three-dimensional portrait of a man far more maligned in the tabloid press tahn he is in our film to remind people that he is not juste the weird, white haired Australian dude wanted in Sweden, hiding in an embassy beind Harrods."Esta foi a defesa de Benedict. O "ataque" de Julian segue. Porém, a bem da verdade, o filme não o desfavorece tanto, apesar de certas discrepâncias, mas não tantas.
Dear Benedict,
Thank you for trying to contact me. It is the first approach by anyone from the Dreamworks production to me or WikiLeaks.
My assistants communicated your request to me, and I have given it a lot of thought and examined your previous work, which I am fond of.
I think I would enjoy meeting you.
The bond that develops between an actor and a living subject is significant.
If the film reaches distribution we will forever be correlated in the public imagination. Our paths will be forever entwined. Each of us will be granted standing to comment on the other for many years to come and others will compare our characters and trajectories.
But I must speak directly.
I hope that you will take such directness as a mark of respect, and not as an unkindness.
I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film.
I do not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about.
I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about.
It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation.
In other circumstances this vendetta may have gone away, but our conflict with the United States government and the establishment press has created a patronage and commissioning market – powerful, if unpopular – for works and comments that are harmful to us.
There are dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided to base its script only on the most toxic. So toxic is the first book selected by Dreamworks that it is distributed to US military bases as a mechanism to discourage military personnel from communicating with us. Its author is publicly known to be involved in the Dreamworks production in an ongoing capacity.
Dreamworks' second rights purchase is the next most toxic, biased book. Published and written by people we have had a bitter contractual dispute with for years, whose hostility is well known. Neither of these two books were the first to be published and there are many independent authors who have written positive or neutral books, all of whom Dreamworks ignored.
Dreamworks has based its entire production on the two most discredited books on the market.
I know the film intends to depict me and my work in a negative light.
I believe it will distort events and subtract from public understanding.
It does not seek to simplify, clarify or distil the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it.
It will resurrect and amplify defamatory stories which were long ago shown to be false.
My organisation and I are the targets of political adversary from the United States government and its closest allies.
The United States government has engaged almost every instrument of its justice and intelligence system to pursue—in its own words—a 'whole of government' investigation of 'unprecedented scale and nature' into WikiLeaks under draconian espionage laws. Our alleged sources are facing their entire lives in the US prison system. Two are already in it. Another one is detained in Sweden.
Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion.
This film is going to bury good people doing good work, at exactly the time that the state is coming down on their heads.
It is going to smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand.
As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice.
It seeks to ride on the back of our work, our reputation and our struggles.
It seeks to cut our strength with weakness. To cut affection with exploitation. To cut diligence with paranoia. To cut loyalty with naivety. To cut principle with hypocrisy. And above all, to cut the truth with lies.
The film's many distortions buttress what the prosecution will argue. Has argued. Is arguing. In my case, and in that of others. These cases will continue for years.
The studio that is producing the film is not a vulnerable or weak party.
Dreamworks' free speech rights are not in jeopardy – ours are.
Dreamworks is an extremely wealthy organisation, with ties to powerful interests in the US government.
I must therefore question the choices and motives behind it: the opportunism, fears and mundanity; the unwritten rules of film financing and distribution in the United States; the cringe against doing something useful and brave.
I believe that you are a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations.
You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth.
Not because you want to, of course you don't, but because, in the end, you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched.
Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world.
I believe that you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise.
Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that vilifies and marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state.
Consider the consequences to people who may fall into harm because of this film.
Many will fight against history being blackwashed in this way. It is a collective history now, involving millions of people, because millions have opened their eyes as a result of our work and the attempts to destroy us.
I believe you are well intentioned but surely you can see why it is a bad idea for me to meet with you.
By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film, and endorse the talented, but debauched, performance that the script will force you to give.
I cannot permit this film any claim to authenticity or truthfulness. In its current form it has neither, and doing so would only further aid the campaign against me.
It is contrary to my interests, and to those of my organisation, and I thank you for your offer, and what I am sure is your genuine intent, but I must, with inexpressible regret, turn it down.
Julian Assange
A bem da verdade, como disse acima o filme não o desfavorece tanto quanto temia, talvez seja até graças a Benedict Cumberbatch. Não é nenhuma obra de arte, mas em certos aspectos pode até ser considerado didático. apesar da superficialidade.
São as denúncias de Wikileaks e a transformação que Julian gerou nas esferas de poder é que são remarcáveis. O Quinto Poder é mesmo o do cidadão que ganhou acesso à informação e pode, se quiser, reagir, fazer algo, ou continuar quieto engolindo conversa fiada.
Abaixo, eis parte dos fatos, relatados pela BBC inglesa em palavra e imagens.
John Pilger conversa com Julian Assange (2011)
Documentário de Alex Gybney: Wikileaks (2013)
The Moment of Truth with Julian Assange and Edward Snowden
Is Edward Snowden a hero?
Debate between Chris Hedges and Law scholar Geoffrey Stone
PS Middle East: A diplomatic spat has erupted between Israel and Romania after Bucharest reportedly refused to allow Romanian construction workers to be employed in settlements being built in the occupied West Bank.
The row, reported by Israel's military radio on Tuesday, comes in the wake of tensions between Israel and the European Union over new guidelines that bar EU funding for any Israeli entity operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Talks with Bucharest on importing Romanian manual labour broke down in 2012, the radio said, but resumed at Israel's initiative after a new Romanian government came to power in May that year.
Differences centre on Bucharest's request that Israel guarantee no Romanian construction workers would be employed on settlements on occupied Palestinian territory that are considered illegal under international law.
There was no immediate comment from the Romanian embassy in Tel Aviv.
It was Israel's second diplomatic row with an EU country this week, following a row with the Netherlands over a new security scanner to be installed on the Israel-Gaza border that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was to have inaugurated last Sunday.
The Dutch government had hoped the scanner would serve to facilitate an increase in the export of goods from Gaza to the West Bank, but Israeli officials accused the Dutch of trying to impose "political conditions".
Also on Sunday, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans refused to accept an Israeli military escort around Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank city of Hebron.
The European Union guidelines, which go into effect in January, ban funding for and financial dealing with projects linked to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário