A Mighty Heart [2007]
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Actor: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi, Irfan Khan, Will Patton
To get this out of the way; there’s a lot of talk on the various movie-related message-boards out there about how the movie is supposed to be incredibly racist. The reasoning behind it is that Mariane Pearl is part Dutch, part Cuban and part French in real life, and is played by Angelina Jolie, who’s white. I can’t even begin to understand the criticism so I won’t address it in my review.
Michael Winterbottom, the man who directed this film, was unknown to me before he made Code 46, an underrated, science-fiction movie starring Tim Robbins, which reminded me of Gattaca. That film was fantastic, and when I realised he was directing A Mighty Heart I got excited. I was quite surprised to see that the patient, steady, long shots that were so characteristic of Code 46 were replaced by a hectic, free-hand, unsteady-cam shots that is reminiscent of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. I don’t know when it happened that the unsteady-cam became the drug of choice for directors that want to portray confusion, but I’m getting a bit tired of it being overused. In a few particularly confusing scenes, sure. Or fast-cut shots for that matter, but doing it throughout the entire movie just convinces me that it’s a cheap trick, applied with little or no subtlety. Having said that, I do want to point out that there are quite a few hectic and confusing scenes in the movie, which largely takes place in Karachi. I’ve been to cities like Karachi, and they are inherently hectic and tiring in their scope and overload, so at times the technique adds to, rather than detracts from the film.
The film is about the true story of the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl (Futterman), American journalist for the Washington Post in Pakistan early 2002, and the subsequent search for him and his kidnappers by Pakistani, Afghani and U.S. authorities. Actually, it’s more about his then-pregnant wife Mariane (Jolie), also a journalist in Pakistan, and the way she copes with her husband’s kidnapping, dealing with the authorities, and ultimately dealing with his gruesome death.
I remember seeing the video of Daniel Pearl’s beheading online somewhere, and I remembered how gruesome and bloody it was. And before I sat down in the theatre I was wondering whether or not this film would be a bloody and gruesome one, and, if not, how they’d convey all the violence of the situation. Well, it wasn’t bloody, gory or gruesome, but the violence and ugliness is there, but hidden very deep beneath the surface. It’s actually here where the subtlety that I spoke of earlier is best used. There’s a interrogation scene in which a man is tortured by Pakistani authorities under the leadership of their captain, played magnificently by Irfan Khan. The torture is nothing more than a nod and something unseen and unheard happens off-camera, followed by more anguished cries from the one being tortured, and a confession. Very well done.
The acting is very good. Khan is consistently good throughout the film, and Jolie much less so. Accents aren’t really her thing, as I can’t seem to get Alexander out of my head when I hear her pathetic attempts at a French accent. It’s not so much that, I realise, but more the fact that she can’t keep it up throughout the entire film. There are some particularly gripping scenes in which the sky seems to be the limit of her acting abilities, like the cry she releases when she hears of Daniel’s death; that certainly touched something raw.