Ithaka
Ben Lawrence’s is the latest documentary to update the saga of Julian Assange, the activist who is now facing 175 years inside an American jail.
Julian Assange has been at the centre of many films over the past ten years. Indeed, in the one dramatised drama about him, Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate (2013), he was brilliantly portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch even though the film itself failed at the box-office. Understandably it is documentaries that have again and again featured Assange including Alex Gibney's impressive work, also from 2013, We Steal Secrets The Story of WikiLeaks. If the story of his rise to fame as the founder of WikiLeaks was dramatic enough, what followed has become a saga that has intensified over the years. With Assange becoming a wanted man due to the publication of leaked military documents by WikiLeaks (documents evidencing war crimes by the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan), he has won acclaim in many quarters for being a whistleblower exposing truths that matter. Simultaneously the authorities have branded him a traitor to his country later on adding espionage charges. His flight to London, his period of refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy from 2012 to 2019 and his subsequent detention in Belmarsh prison together with his recent attempts to resist a request for extradition to the USA have meant that his story has stayed in the headlines. Even now it remains unresolved.
Ithaka, a documentary by Ben Lawrence, takes its title from a poem by C.P. Cavafy and also invites us to think of Julian Assange as akin to a tortured figure in Greek mythology. It was shot over two years culminating in 2021 and, consequently, despite Assange’s situation being at the heart of it, the detailed focus here is on developments subsequent to those covered in the earlier films. It also stands apart from a film like the 2016 Risk made by Laura Poitras in being unashamedly one-sided. In her film Poitras indicated that when she started filming she was very sympathetic to Assange but then over the years of shooting came to feel that he was in many ways untrustworthy. What this meant was that Risk invited the viewer to ponder what they saw and to draw their own conclusions.
Self-evidently Ithaka adopts a very different stance. It is a Shipton House production and Julian Assange's half-brother, Gabriel Shipton, is one of the producers. It is striking too that the film bears the subtitle "a father, a family, a fight for justice”. Ithaka takes the view that the attempts to bring Assange to trial (the outcome of which could be an American court sentence of 175 years) are politically motivated. It points out that the USA Espionage Act has never previously been applied against a publisher and Stella Moris, the lawyer who became Assange’s partner, stresses the terrible irony inherent in Julian Assange being charged for publishing valid revelations about American war crimes when, as she puts it, “The criminality is not Julian’s".
There will be plenty of viewers who can concur with the view that the actions against Assange put journalism on the line and suggest (how apt in the current climate) that the credibility of governments is open to question. Consequently, even if some prefer the questioning approach of Risk, many will welcome a film like this which is, in effect, the case for the defence. It does, of course, involve full access and, if Julian Assange himself is only glimpsed, his father, John Shipton, is a central figure with Stella Moris (now Assange’s wife) also a major presence. As a close-up portrait, Ithaka certainly has value, but it doesn't possess the kind of warmth that makes the viewer feel more than an observer. In many ways the film’s tone stems from John Shipton who makes one think of the phrase "like father, like son". Risk showed Julian Assange to be an outwardly unemotional man, a thinker seemingly lacking in spontaneity, and here the father, deeply committed though he is, has a manner and a way with language that discourages any intimate response. He regards his past history and his odd early relationship with Julian as irrelevant, but they do come to feature although less fully than might have been desirable. The fact that the film’s subtitle puts John Shipton and the family ahead of "a fight for justice" feels strange. Indeed, Ithaka is an interesting film rather than a satisfying one. Nevertheless, those who are ardent in their support for Julian Assange will embrace it.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring John Shipton, Stella Moris, Nils Melker, Ai Weiwei, Philip Banse, Albio Gonzalez, Teresa Devant, Joe Rogan, Jennifer Robinson, Gabriel Shipton, Severine Shipton, Craig Murray.
Dir Ben Lawrence, Pro Gabriel Shipton and Adrian Devant, Screenplay Ben Lawrence, Ph Niels Ladefoged, Ed Karen Johnson, Music Brian Eno.
Shipton House/Screen Australia/Film Victoria-Dartmouth Films.
106 mins. Australia/UK. 2021. UK Rel: 8 July 2022. Cert. 12A.