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MOVIE REVIEW
A Mighty Heart
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi
In early 2002, I remember logging on to the Boston Phoenix's web site to witness for myself the shocking and disgusting beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at the hands of terrorists in Pakistan. It seemed so surreal. I watched it a few times. The media did not tell the entire story which unfolds in A Mighty Heart.
In the film, based on the memoir by Mariane Pearl, it shows the intense search for Pearl which involved the police in Pakistan, friends/colleagues of Pearl and an American security expert. Daniel's email and cell phone are traced and links are drawn between everyone that he had contact with en route to the interview where he got kidnapped. There's an immense hatred toward Americans and Westerners in Pakistan and Winterbottom covers this through various scenes throughout the film. Even some of Mariane's friends remark on it. The film also shows the good and solidly fair people in Pakistan. It's about the terrorist act but also the humanity.
A Mighty Heart marks the third post 9/11 film by one of my favorite directors, Michael Winterbottom. Two young Afghan refugees take a long, complicated journey to England In This World , while the documentary-style, emotionally fueled Road to Guantanamo tells the true story of three British citizens of Arab descent who are wrongfully arrested and detained by the United States. While Tristam Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story is a fun, zany, hilarious romp, Winterbottom is able to flip easily to cover more serious material, such as in my favorite Winterbottom film, the heartwrenching, touching and sometimes funny Welcome to Sarajevo.
Yes, we know how it all ends but we do not know everything that happened between the kidnapping and his vicious execution. Winterbottom takes the material in A Mighty Heart and layers it so that the audience becomes invested in Mariane's passionate love for her husband and ultimately relates to her frantic search to find him. As Pearl, Angelina Jolie delves into every angle of her personality: her intensity, her strength, her immense heart and her fairness which is an extension of her journalism career and her worldly view of things.
A Mighty Heart is a remarkable love story and an intense drama.
Steele recommendation: See it in the theater
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