MIDNIGHT REVIEWS The Trust Fall
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
The Trust Fall (2hr 8mins)
Directed by: Kym Staton
Featuring: Julian Assange, Tariq Ali, Stella Assange, Daniel Ellsberg
Synopsis: A documentary focused on the stories brought to light by journalist Julian Assange, as well as the story of his incarceration.
Review: The very first frame of this documentary warns me that the film contains images that may be ‘confronting.’ It is the perfect first ingredient for anyone who wants to stick it to the libtards, or the woke, or the snowflakes or whatever name anyone wants to give them that they can’t even handle something that might possibly confront them, but rest assured (or rest anxious?) The Trust Fall features images that not only confront. They shock. They disturb.
The opening, however, is simple and if anything extremely dry. The first fifteen minutes is nothing more than a series of events and dates, facts and figures that are hard to keep hold of if you’re not paying attention. Despite the slight feeling of monotony and occasionally dreary delivery, this choice does make the background very clear to anyone who doesn’t know much about the story of Julian Assange.
For whatever reason, it’s during this time that the film makers have decided to feature multiple narrators, a jarring experience as they sometimes switch from one sentence to another. Some narrators are better than others.
It’s hard not to feel angry or depressed.
We are then introduced to various talking heads, some of which pop up throughout the remaining runtime. These are a little different to the usual talking heads, however, as the ones on show here are so incredibly exasperated. The emotion on display is sometimes palpable and their argument is clear, but the documentary does its best work when showing images from elsewhere. For example, we see Stella Assange move through a crowd of protestors chanting support for her husband. Her young child, happily cuddling her, mimics the crowd and starts muttering, “Free Julian Assange.” It’s these moments that are most effecting.
It’s hard not to feel angry or depressed during these moments, in a similar way to the excellent BBC documentary on the death of Jamal Khashoggi. These films both deal with the incredibly important ideal of press freedom. If Julian Assange dies, The Trust Fall says, then freedom of speech receives the death knell too. This is prescient given recent events in the Middle East, as well as the coverage traditional and social media have given them.
The documentary does threaten to lose focus as it shifts from declaring American war crimes to giving background on its chief subject, but it just about succeeds in this balancing act and so we get to see how footage of an attack on civilians in New Baghdad leads all the way to an Australian journalist getting locked up in Belmarsh.
Just when you think the documentary is going to move on, it shows the footage and it is horrific. Afterwards, we are shown a young boy trying to describe why he was in the passenger seat of a van which was also fired on, but he can’t finish his explanation. Instead he shows the scar he got courtesy of something no child should have to go through. I think I agree with the sentiment that if this footage, and other pieces like it, were shown widely then any support for war would plummet through the floor.
The film does feel manipulative when it slips into clips of people, who presumably knew the civilians that died, when they themselves watch the footage. This isn’t a group just finding out that friends/family have died. This is a group being filmed by a documentary crew, who have set up footage of the deaths for them to view. Perhaps a step too far.
For obvious reasons there isn’t any response from the other side of the argument. It’s fashionable, or cliché, to talk about balance but it would’ve been very interesting to see the response given how seemingly obvious the documentary makes things.
It’s clear that The Trust Fall’s strengths are in its imagery, not so much its words.
For reasons even more obvious, we don’t spend too much time with Julian Assange. The film goes through great pains to paint him as a deep thinker, someone who cares about the right thing and someone who doesn’t care about rubbing people up the wrong way. But the most we get is snippets of archive footage and it’s mostly up to others to describe and explore Assange.
We spend time with Stella as she describes their bizarre wedding (blurry photos, printed on ordinary A4 paper, showing the blank, stark room where the ceremony took place; these photos are not allowed to be shown to journalistic outlets by law). Other interviewees feature fellow whistleblowers, UN torture experts and even Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Another misstep happens towards the end when The Trust Fall starts attempting to wax poetic. This sequence features meaningless buzzwords that could’ve been lifted from a slideshow on wellness, and metaphors that are so on the nose as to be a bogey on the end of an otherwise moving documentary. “He channelled leaks through a stream of innovation along a river of diligence to a lake of truth,” in particular made my eyes want to roll so far backwards I could see my boss standing behind me wondering why I wasn’t working.
It’s clear that The Trust Fall’s strengths are in its imagery, not so much its words. When the camera merely observes, there are sequences that leave jaws on the floor and eyes open wide; moments that are burned into the mind permanently. A startling film that consistently posits questions that demand answers.
