‘A Mighty Heart’

This film about the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl is a thoughtful and sensitively told story for our times.

By: Elise Nakhnikian

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Angelina Jolie stars as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart.


   Brad Pitt and his co-producers must have been delighted when Angelina Jolie agreed to play the lead in A Mighty Heart. Even if she weren’t a fine choice for the role — which she is — surely she’d attract viewers who wouldn’t otherwise be interested in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, since an unsensationalized movie about a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by Muslim extremists is not exactly date bait.
   But fame is a powerful magnet that can repel as much as it attracts. Casting Jolie as Daniel’s wife, French journalist Mariane Pearl, undoubtedly lost the movie a lot of viewers too, since so many people are disgusted with the media vortex that follows Jolie and Pitt wherever they go. And that’s a shame, because — Jolie or no Jolie — A Mighty Heart is a gripping, thoughtful and sensitively told story.
   As portrayed in Mariane’s book of the same name and in this film adaptation, Karachi at the time of Danny’s abduction was on the front lines of an international battle that will ultimately reach us all. The battle is between the majority of the world’s citizens, who want to live in peace and mutual respect in a functioning society, and a small group of extremists who want to terrorize and paralyze the rest of us. And the way to win that war, Mariane believes, is to refuse to be cowed or driven to hatred, no matter what the terrorists do.
   The ordeal Mariane endured in January and February 2002 put that philosophy cruelly to the test. Holed up in the house of Danny’s Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani (Archie Panjabi), where she and Danny had been staying for what was to be a short visit, a hugely pregnant Mariane refuses to succumb to hysteria or hopelessness after her husband disappears. Instead, she, Asra, and a growing team of fellow journalists and anti-terrorism experts do all they can to find Danny before it’s too late.
   Their race against the relentlessly ticking clock is suspenseful even though we know where it will end, thanks to the sense of urgency director Michael Winterbottom’s (Welcome to Sarajevo, A Cock and Bull Story) brisk pacing and documentary shooting style bring to the story. Filming occurred, according to the production notes, "in typical Winterbottom style" with a skeleton crew, no master shots or close-ups, and a hand-held digital video camera following the actors. Scenes were shot in sequence and usually in one take, and natural light was used when possible.
   The acting is extremely realistic as well. Jolie steadies the racehorse nerves that usually fuel her larger-than-life performances to project Mariane’s trademark sense of determined calm — though she taps that constant buzz to show us the nervous energy that kept Mariane from sleeping for days, and the anger percolating just beneath the surface. That tension between what both women are feeling and what they are showing the outside world sometimes pulls you out of the story, making you see the actress instead of the role, but it pays off when Mariane learns about Danny’s death and Jolie lets loose everything she has pent up, howling in a scene that feels wrenchingly real.
   Mariane’s and Jolie’s are not the only mighty hearts on display. Danny (Dan Futterman), seen briefly at the beginning of the film and then in flashbacks and on re-enacted snippets of the infamous tape that showed his beheading, comes across as level-headed, brave and considerate — not to mention devoted to his wife. So does his Wall Street Journal editor, John Bussey (Denis O’Hare), who flies out to Karachi after Danny’s disappearance to join Mariane’s team and stays until his reporter is found. Danny’s parents, [ast: perhaps remove this line??: ]who have since started a foundation in his name aimed at promoting cross-cultural understanding[ast: to here??: ], are also amazingly stoic and optimistic, even cheering an e-mail from the kidnappers with photos of Danny in bondage, since it’s proof that their son is alive. And Asra is a rock, always there for Mariane, always digging for another piece of the puzzle, and never surrendering to despair.
   The Pearls’ friends and allies are a multi-culti bunch. Mariane is a French Buddhist of Cuban, Dutch, African and Chinese ancestry; Asra is an Indian Muslim; Danny is an American Jew; and most of the people helping them are Pakistani Muslims. That fact is generally portrayed without any emphasis — the way, one gathers, the Pearls experienced it — but both the book and the movie stress how helpful and hard-working the Pakistani security forces were, reminding us that terrorism is not a Pakistani problem but rather an international problem that is currently hurting people in places like Pakistan more than anywhere else.
   By the time we learn definitively about Danny Pearl’s death, we have a strong sense of what that loss means to his family, particularly Mariane. But we don’t get more than a blurry sense of what his death meant to the practice of journalism — or whether that practice is worth risking your life for, as the Pearls clearly believed that it was.
   The jackal packs that pursue the famous and afflicted, not to mention the politically slanted opinions that are rendered as news, have created large groups of people — maybe even whole generations — who no longer have faith in Pearl’s reporting-based, "objective" form of journalism. A Mighty Heart won’t move those people unless they connect with the purely personal side of his story. In fact, it may confirm their belief that reporters are a mindless and heartless horde, since that description seems to fit nearly all the journalists who hound or question Mariane during her ordeal.
   But if you believe in the power of open-minded, fair reporting to help us understand the world we live in, thinking of Danny Pearl’s death in that light will bring another layer of meaning to this already nuanced, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful real-life horror story.
Rated R for language.