Frank Connor
Dan Stevens (left) as Ian Katz, prominent investigative journalist for The Guardian, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, in 'The Fifth Estate.'
TORONTO — The 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival kicked off with a salute to the world’s biggest movie fan — and a study of a media man of mystery.
As this year’s program of more than 360 features and shorts from around the world got underway, organizers and founders announced that a seat at the fest’s hub, the TIFF Bell Lightbox Theater, would be named in honor of late movie critic Roger Ebert. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Sun-Times writer, a champion of the festival since its inception, died in April of cancer.
“Roger loved the Toronto audiences, because they were so passionate about movies,” Ebert’s widow, Chaz Ebert, said Thursday from the stage of Roy Thomson Hall as the crowd geared up for a screening of the WikiLeaks-themed drama “The Fifth Estate.” “He would stand in line and have discussions with moviegoers about which films to see.
“I feel like Roger is actually here with us, lurking about – because he wants to see the movie!”
The lights dimmed and “The Fifth Estate” began the fest on a moody, contemplative note. The drama, directed by Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters,” “Kinsey”), depicts self-styled truth-teller Julian Assange’s creation of the corruption-exposing website WikiLeaks and the events leading up to its publication of more than 250,000 classified U.S. government files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’d been wanting to make a political movie for a long time,” said Condon, who also directed the final two blockbusters in the “Twilight” trilogy and won an Oscar for writing the Best Picture-winning “Chicago.”
“To me, this story is about issues of privacy and transparency in an Internet age.”
The film, adapted from a book by Assange’s one-time right-hand man Daniel Domscheit-Berg, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the white-haired Internet lightning rod, currently in exile in a London embassy to avoid charges of sexual misconduct in Sweden. The British star of TV’s “Sherlock” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” gives a fascinating, sinewy turn as the master leaker in a film with opening credits that provide a whirlwind history of media, from wood carvings to modem cables.
It’s the first of three films Cumberbatch has at this year’s TIFF. This weekend he’ll be seen in the pre-Civil War drama “12 Years a Slave,” and later he’ll co-star with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in the film version of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer- and Tony-winning stage drama “August: Osage County.”
“I wanted to interpret, not impersonate Assange,” Cumberbatch said at a press conference. “There’s an acreage of stuff out there with him speaking or being interviewed. ... But the film investigates the man in a more private mode.”
Assange, who filmmakers say criticized an early draft of Josh Singer’s script, has not seen the film, “but I imagine he won’t particularly want to support it,” Cumberbatch said.
“A lot of people have said that watching the movie is an odd experience of being impressed by Assange and then being turned off by him every five minutes or so,” said Condon. “He opened a door that Edward Snowden just walked through. In some ways, he’s an admirable figure. But is he the kind of person we want to leave that responsibility to?”
Thursday also saw the debut in Toronto of the French drama “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” an intimate story about two young women involved in an intense love affair. The film’s lead actresses, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, made headlines last week when they told interviewers that the film’s director, Abdellatif Kechiche, didn’t prepare them for the three-hour film’s intense love scenes and heightened emotions.
On Friday, the World War II-set “The Railway Man” debuted, with Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth starring in a drama about a British army officer forced to work on the Japanese “Death Railway” from Burma to Siam, as well as the ensemble drama “Parkland.” Set in Dallas’ Parkland Hospital, where both John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald were brought after being shot in November 1963, the film stars Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver and Billy Bob Thornton. Paul Giamatti plays Abraham Zapruder, whose home-movie recording of Kennedy’s motorcade became a part of history.
On a lighter note came “Bad Words,” the first film directed by Jason Bateman. The comedy, which screened Friday, stars the “Arrested Development” actor as a middle-aged high-school dropout intent on winning a spelling bee he lost as a kid, thanks to a goofy loophole in the rules. Kathryn Hahn and Allison Janney co-star in the movie, which provided some laughs amid all the serious subject matter in the early going at this year’s festival.
jneumaier@nydailynews.com
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