The beginning of the film established a positive image of Assange with a hacking incident and the rhetoric of several characters. As one of them said, this is a story of a man against the world, and undoubtedly emphasized the image of Assange as a "hero" at the beginning. . The turning point occurred when Nick Davis, a reporter from The Guardian, commented on Assange. From here, the film turned to criticize Assange, and this was the beginning of the psychological gap between viewers.
The director’s criticism of Assange mainly focused on Assange’s view of being a radical transparencyist, that is, lack of journalistic ethics, failure to minimize the harm to information, and a large amount of information but ignoring the responsibility behind the information.
"I asked Julian if he would publish information on the website that might kill innocent people, such as how to put anthrax on the town's water source. He replied: Yes, even if it may cause casualties."
"Julian is a computer hacker. He believes that all information is good and everything should be made public. Sometimes he does regard human activities as formulaic things. He can’t see the beating heart in the human body. He sees it as simple The formula, they leaked secrets to the occupying forces, it must be very bad, the informer should die."
From here on, the "hero" is gradually no longer perfect, and the gap between "predictions" and "results" may make some movie viewers doubled in anger And disappointment, this kind of emotion will make us easily come to the conclusion that discrediting the "hero" is equivalent to speaking for the "power", and such a conclusion will make us ignore the other information conveyed by the film.
For example, the video showing the massacre of civilians taken on the Apache helicopter detained by the US military in the film, the serious concealment of the casualties of civilians, especially women and children, the existence of assassination troops, prisoner torture, and the abusiveness of Manning after being detained. Retaliation, politically motivated unfair handling of personnel, the government’s consistent quibbles in the face of facts, and the commission of war crimes by handing over a large number of prisoners of war to the Iraqi authorities in violation of the Geneva Conventions are the dark side of the US government.
People often tend to think that "heroes" are perfect, and any flaws are discredited. Assange seems to most people to be a "hero" against power, so much so that we often forget that although he has more superb hacking skills and courage to be an enemy of the world than ordinary people, he is first of all a human, and this world There is no perfect human being, as long as it is human, there will be shortcomings.
I personally tend to think that the director tries to maintain a neutral position in the film, showing multiple aspects of the characters to reflect the complexity of the event. Julian Assange has the courage to confront the world but lacks the concepts and methods to correctly process information. Bradley Manning is a gay who has a strong sense of loneliness and cannot find his own personal position, and is also a brave and extraordinary whistleblower. Adrian Ramo was a whistleblower and blamed himself for betraying Manning's trust.
As for the large-scale sexual assault case, even if the director gave one of the "victims" a lot of interview footage, if you can get from the film provided by the two women who voluntarily have sex with Assange because Assange does not want to bring contraception. After setting up the divine suspicion that he would contract AIDS and then report the bizarre case information of Assange together and feel that there is nothing suspicious about this matter, then the director's black method is too lack of IQ.
This world is far from being as simple as either black or white or right or wrong. When we feel angry because the image of the "hero" in our hearts is damaged, then perhaps we should examine whether this "hero" is Assange as a human or a "hero" deified by our religious worship.
Assange finally escaped into the British embassy of the Ecuadorian government that once killed reporters. After exhausting his family property, he began to use various methods and even asked for millions of dollars in interview fees to raise funds to get out of the predicament. While ironic, it also seemed to herald him. The end of the hero.
I gave this film four stars and one star was deducted because I think the director should perhaps give Assange more tolerance, and should not be too demanding of his perfection and give him the same amount of criticism. It doesn’t matter if you unconditionally leak other people’s secrets while keeping your own secrets, whether you have the delusion of being tracked and murdered, or evading hunting and collecting funds, Assange is not a god after all. He is not against an individual but is countless times stronger than him. It is obviously unfair for the government to ask him to exercise and fight for his rights in the way of ordinary people.
As the psychologist Philip Zimbardo pointed out in The Lucifer Effect, most people tend to overestimate the importance of personal nature and underestimate situational factors when understanding the behavior of others. The glory or hostility given by the whole world may be too heavy for an individual. These glory and hostility are more or less involved in the formation and change of Assange’s character, and situational factors are added to judge Assange. After the reference standard of behavior, I think our evaluation of Assange may be more fair.
Today, when "powers" are rampant around the world, Assange's personal merits and demerits may have surpassed moral and legal judgments, because the sad thing is that we really need a "flag" like Assange. But mankind can never expect that relying solely on a "hero" Assange can change an already imbalanced world. The only thing that is certain is that Assange and the WikiLeaks he established have created a precedent, and this is just the beginning.
"The nature of information is to spread. In a way, concealing information is an attempt to abolish the law of universal gravitation. It may succeed in a short time, but it will be free sooner or later." The final director of the film responded to the information through Bill Leonard's words There is some hope for the open future.
Information disclosure will inevitably be accompanied by a sense of responsibility. Not only should the government's power be restricted, the public who holds the information should also think about how to better exercise the right of disclosure. Just because information is not simple data, it contains too many social factors, and therefore the way it is used determines whether the result will lead to salvation or destruction.
"Dim blue dot photos can summarize everything for me." In a chat with Adrian Ramo, Manning sent a link to the dim blue dot, which he read while reading an article written by astronaut Carl Shagen Famous photos of the Earth. Shagen said, that's home, that's us, all the saints and sinners in human history lived there, turned into dust particles, floating in the sunlight, our smallness, the vastness of the universe, we are doomed to wonder whether it will It is up to us to get help and save ourselves from our own hands.
PS. If you think that this director is a "power" megaphone, you might as well take a look at another eight-episode documentary series by this director-"Why Poverty?" 》
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