January 23, 2002: Daniel Pearl, South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted en route to an interview in Karachi, Pakistan during his post 911 investigation of terrorist shoe bomber Richard Reid. Despite a massive rescue effort, Pearl was beheaded by his captors. Soon after, his wife, Marianne Pearl, a French journalist who was six months pregnant during the ordeal, wrote and published A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl. A Mighty Heart, directed by Michael Winterbottom, is the film adaptation of her account, starring screen goddess Angelina Jolie as the widowed memoirist.
The majority of its viewers are surely aware of the conclusion to A Mighty Heart; Daniel Pearl’s story was a very large and highly publicized part of recent history, a traumatic testament to modern day terrorism. But the intricacies of his abduction and the details surrounding his death may be less than common knowledge, deserving subjects of a probing sort of film. The creators of A Mighty Heart had quite an opportunity to seize a story already abounding in drama and expand its impact by clarifying the details of the event and fleshing out the personalities of its hero and heroin. But I found the movie to fall disappointingly short; the film covered little more than news broadcasts have.
First, there’s the plot. A terribly confusing network of sources and schemers, the plotters behind Pearl’s kidnapping were scarcely distinguished here; the film shows that his rescuers found no way to organize the information short of drawing a chart on a dry erase board; I wish they would have left the thing on screen to help the rest of us.
Next, there are the characters. The story behind A Mighty Heart might have better suited a documentary film. Or perhaps I should say that A Mighty Heart essentially is a documentary film: the characters are stale, and the perspective is scattered. And even though I am growing increasingly used to seeing Jolie’s face in the midst of the third world in US Weekly photographs, she looked startlingly out of place on screen. A lot of the film made use of real footage which would have partnered nicely with the recreated shots had their authenticity not been spoiled by the jolt of her face.
There is so much hinted at in the film, but nothing was clearly professed or discovered. There is obviously a wonderful love story behind all that transpired in Pakistan. I am not suggesting that the movie should have been about romantic love over journalistic integrity, but giving substance to Daniel’s family life other than Jolie’s baby bump would have greater conveyed the impact of his sacrifice. A few wedding flashbacks hardly trace the love between the two reporters; they may even do more harm than good in perpetuating the cliché.
Surprisingly, there were remarkably few solid images in this film amidst the confusion that often occupied the screen. I did happen to notice the motif that seemed to be made of a Pakistani child, shown repeatedly playing innocently with his toys on the floor. It seems to me that the motive behind this movie was to elevate the effort of Daniel Pearl, to give significance to his death as well as his mission. But I couldn’t help but compare the little boy to the journalist, whose motive for risking so much for so little gain still seems almost futile, despite a million dollar movie. A Mighty Heart is really only half-hearted at best.
Liz Licorish
Comments directed to: LizFlix@gmail.com
Published: June 24, 2007
