A Mighty Heart
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
First Brad Pitt, one of the producers of A Mighty Heart, and the film’s star Angelina Jolie, committed themselves to the story of Mariane Pearl, widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in 2002. But not content to portray Mariane’s suffering and perseverance, Pitt and Jolie bungled their compassion by hiring one of the worst contemporary filmmakers, Michael Winterbottom, to advance a modish perspective that denies the war on terror. “I am not terrorized,” Jolie’s smirking Marianne assures moviegoers.
As A Mighty Heart tells it, America’s foreign policy is to blame for Mariane Pearl’s bereavement and the crimes of Islamic terrorism. Throughout the film, reference is made to the treatment of post-9/11 detainees at Guantanamo Bay as if to rationalize the actions of Pakistani extremists who kidnap and kill an American citizen. Pitt and Jolie surely knew that this political skepticism has become Winterbottom’s specialty in such U.S.-bashing films as In This World and Road to Guantanamo. While a simple tearjerker about a freedom-loving widow would risk an embarrassing emotional display, Pitt, Jolie and Winterbottom maintain their cool status with this fashionably cynical propaganda film. Its effect is not cathartic, just frustrating.
Nothing in A Mighty Heart conveys the magnanimity of its title. Jolie’s Mariane Pearl sits pregnant and helpless in her Karachi apartment waiting for Daniel to return from a dangerous interview with a radical Muslim, then waits for his newspaper editor to rescue him, then waits as a bloodthirsty American diplomat (Will Patton) wrangles with Middle Eastern politicians for news of Daniel’s fate. Winterbottom emphasizes Mariane’s confusion about the international intrigue between governments and newsmedia of different countries. He stirs a hodgepodge of motives and personalities in the manner of Syriana and Babel—but with his particular state-of-the-art muddle.
Instead of life-or-death suspense, Winterbottom uses blurry digital photography that creates a bewildered vision of the Orient. It’s the trendy Western inclination to invade foreign places with imprecise technology that disguises one’s confusion and lack of insight. That’s why Mariane’s best friend and co-journalist Asha (Archie Panjabi) responds to every new clue with the same exasperation: “I can’t believe...!” She expresses the indignation of the Western elite—which is Winterbottom’s own emotion and more definite than any Mariane shows.
Jolie, using a thick French accent and frizzy-haired, thin-faced resemblance to Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, transforms herself into a temperamental grand dame. Yet, oddly, every time Mariane has an emotional outburst, the inept Winterbottom keeps her face off screen. When told Daniel is dead, she sobs with her back to camera; only a dark, indiscernible profile silhouette shows during her big scream. This isn’t subtlety, it’s a denial of the emotional affect movie stars once embodied—even in a sentimental film like the 1945 Dragon Seed (just released on DVD), where Katharine Hepburn played a Chinese peasant suffering Japanese oppression during WWII. Credibility was not in Hepburn’s accent but, rather, her articulate, observable and emotional resistance. As Pitt and Jolie must have wanted, Winterbottom avoids fundamental human feeling for smug, digital-video attitude.
Mariane Pearl’s privileged journalist career gets submerged in Winterbottom’s semi-documentary fakery. He mixes actual footage of Taliban demonstrations with reenacted scenes of turmoil in the streets of Pakistan. This “retrogressive social system” is a collage of international chaos but constructed from pretend-realism: Mariane’s pacing and worrying are intercut with shots of a man falling in traffic, a maid scrubbing floors in the Pearl apartment, the chef cooking, security police rounding up suspects to no avail. The less that goes on to actually find Daniel or his kidnappers, the busier Winterbottom’s editing becomes.
Winterbottom’s emotional denial is almost contemptuous—a series of pointless digressions: flashbacks within plot holes, facile quick cuts, random scenes of randomness like the Pearls being lovey-dovey or Danny idly reading Le Monde. This randomness doesn’t let you concentrate or feel the stressed situation—as John Boorman magnificently did in Beyond Rangoon. Instead, all this shallowness results in discontinuity and false complexity. Winterbottom’s films get praised by critics who approve his flashy political stance but don’t question his imbecilic style or notice his penchant to bamboozle. In terms of winning hearts and minds, A Mighty Heart is a disaster.
