A Mighty Heart (2007)

First off, I must say something about Angelina Jolie: she gave an admirable and heartfelt performance in this wonderful film and does NOT in any way deserve all the terrible things people have accused her and the filmmakers of doing, namely being racist and engaging in "blackfacing." Mariane Pearl requested Jolie to portray her, and that is that. This is a heartbreaking film that does not make us pity Mariane Pearl but allows us to admire her for her strength and courage. Although the film brought tears to my eyes, it is not one of those sob stories with the intention of being a tear-jerker. It is not overly brutal either, showing the trauma of the event as experienced by Mariane Pearl without putting the full-blown horror of it on the audience unnecessarily. Great supporting performances also from Archie Panjabi and Irfan Khan.

Fmovies: "A Mighty heart" is a "realistic" movie, that tells a thru story, based on real events and including real people of real life. The movie is actually an adaption of Mariane Pearl's diary, where she tells the story of her husband, the journalist Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. The main question for the director Michael Witterbottom was to find the right representation of the reality he depicts. And the choices he made for the movie are both logical and disturbing.

Mariane Pearl, as her husband, is a journalist, and the first form the movie adopts in order to deal with the complex reality of the world is a journalistic style, with a camera always on the move. It really looks like a war reportage for television, that sticks to the events and to the characters in an "emergency"'s style. But surprisingly, this realistic aesthetic also reminds a famous fiction's show about terrorism : "24". And it's especially striking when it comes to action or interrogations (read torture...) scenes, with a Pakistan's Jack Bauer's style cop. If the goals of the directors are not the same ("24" only wants to be entertaining, "A Mighty Heart wants to be more...), and the depiction of terrorism differs ("24" is a show about fear, "A mighty heart" avoids a fear treatment), it's the same need to show every aspects of a situation that creates this similarities in the urge of the mise en scene.

And this depiction of reality, that gives an objectivity feeling to the movie, is a little bit strange when you come to consider that the movie is firstly an individually and personal point of view on a situation. An between the two opposite points of view (the subjective story of Mariane Pearl, and the objectivity of the "24" reality representation), Witterbottom seems to have some difficulty to choose. It really gives to the movie an annoying ambiguous point of view, where you're unable to really understand the nature of the images you're watching. And that's an important question in this kind of movie.

This ambiguity is quite surprising, for Winterbottom seemed to have chosen his style in his previous movies. For a completely different subject (the musical English scene from the Punk to the Techno in Manchester) in "24 Hours Party People", he clearly made his the Ford's sentence about reality that you find in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" : "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". And this lack of a strong orientation in "A Mighty Heart" also gives the unpleasant feeling to watch the spectacle of a life more than a testimony about it, and to be an intruder in Mariane Pearl's intimacy, even if the movie claims the contrary.

Though based on a horrifying and tragic event, "A Mighty Heart" is a strangely unmoving film. Director Michael Winterbottom throws plenty of details at us about the investigation into the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl by radical Muslims in Pakistan, and the film plays almost like a documentary, even copping the documentary look with lots of hand-held camera shots and jump-cut editing. But the human story gets buried underneath the complex web of details, and despite a solid performance from Angelina Jolie as Pearl's remarkably stoic wife Mariane, I wasn't much moved by the film.

Winterbottom doesn't display a lot of skill at making the details coherent to his audience, and I'm not sure even now who all of the players were or what role they played. He assumes that everyone will already come to the film knowing the story of Daniel and Mariane Pearl, and while I knew the general outline, I wasn't aware of all the specifics, and this film doesn't help. It recreates the feeling of coming into a T.V. series after having missed the opening episode, and trying to digest material without being able to put it into context.

Grade: B

A Mighty Heart fmovies. MIGHTY HEART is an important film with a tremendous performance from Angelina Jolie and a superb cast that joins her on screen in a story that captures the fear of terrorism which we live with today. From the first frame to the final scene, the power of the camera which moves across the streets of Karachi and into the homes of its citizens, creates a pulse that moves the film forward with both excitement, dread and fear. Fear for not only Daniel Pearl's life, but for many victims of the destructive nature of terrorism the world over.

The film is intelligent, suspenseful, and captures the world of technology which we live in today-cell phones, IP addresses, computers and laptops and the internet-which connects us to both good and evil. There is an anti-American underlying theme in the film and through what America has done in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the audience can fathom the hatred felt for America in many parts of the world. Thus, MIGHTY HEART is a film which delivers both a tragic story, but also one for the United States of America as it continues the violent war in Iraq.

This is one of the more intelligent and well constructed movies of 2007 thus far. Touching on the human element as it collides with the unpleasant realities of hot-bed issues including politics and religion, the brutality and evil this story depicts is at times difficult to watch.

Difficult to watch because the content is disturbing, which is the intent of the film. We see a very human dimension to the real life characters who are depicted sensitively, making the grotesque outcome all the more horrifying. The story is fair to the innocent parties involved, and honest in rightfully assigning the blame to those responsible for these heinous acts. Dramatically and artistically, this is a superior movie.

Angelina Jolie's portrayal of Mariane Pearl feels sincere, but she appears miscast. Little dimension is brought to her real-life subject, a woman inexorably thrust into the limelight amidst painful circumstances. The film would have been better off with another actress in this challenging role.

Still, the movie is outstanding, and worthy of your time.

Angelina Jolie is not just a beautiful woman and the daughter of actor Jon Voight, she is also an incredibly versatile actress. This Oscar-winning beauty is one of those few who is just as comfortable starring in big blockbusters as in emotional dramas. She takes every part very seriously.

Jolie is close friends with Mariane Pearl, the journalist wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (played by Dan Futterman). She is the author of "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl" (on which the film is based) and wanted the actress to portray her. Because Angelina Jolie is a true method-actress - she added dark ringlets, a pregnancy bump and speaks with Pearl's Cuban-French accent. The outcome is simply outstanding! It's about as genuine as any acting performance can get. It's obvious that Jolie didn't want to settle for anything less. She has the utmost respect for Mariane Pearl and the tragedy she went through. And she wanted to translate this amount of respect into her acting.

The amazing thing about this semi-documentary film is that it manages to keep such a hopeful spirit even though we are already aware of what lies ahead. Reporter Danny Pearl is going to die by the hands of Pakistani extremists yet somehow we still keep the faith. On top of that: a good deal of the movie is shot with a hand-held camera and this technique builds the tension especially during the torture/interrogation scenes. It almost feels as though we are present during the entire ordeal. When the terrible news finally comes out that Mariane's husband has been slaughtered mercilessly, the screaming of Angelina Jolie is so realistic and painful that it brought instant tears to my eyes.

In short: A beautiful homage to a horrifying true story with a terrific Angelina Jolie.