I AM BACK - - WITH "A MIGHTY HEART" !

"A Mighty Heart", directed by Michael Winterbottom; written by John Orloff, from Mariane Pearl’s memoir; starring Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman.

TRAGEDIES OF FORESEEN CONSEQUENCE
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

Many feel that the single most horrendous act after the 9/11 Al Qaeda suicide bombings of the Twin Towers was the beheading of kidnapped American Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, Pakistan. No - - the most horrendous act was the US air strikes on Afghanistan in early October 2001. British director, Michael Winterbottom, who also directed the documentary, "Road to Guantanamo," based his recently released film "A Mighty Heart" on French journalist Mariane Pearl’s book about her and her husband’s ordeal, during their five or so weeks on assignment in Pakistan.
People who go to this film should be aware that since it follows Pearl’s book, it is an unbalanced account which skirts the existing volatile political issues exacerbated by US and British presence in Afghanistan relative to her husband’s kidnapping and death. In late January 2002, shortly after they arrive in Karachi, with Mariane (Angelina Jolie) several months pregnant with their first child, Danny Pearl (played by Dan Futterman), tries to contact someone who can give him information about the "shoe-bomber," British citizen Richard Reid. Pearl fails to return for a dinner party, at the home they share with Asra (Archie Panjabi), their Indian assistant. By February, he is dead.
Winterbottom shot his one-sided film in a darkly lit, documentary style of hand-held cameras, quick cuts to various locations, lots of talking heads, interviews, and shots of Pearl in cabs traveling at night through narrow streets choked with vehicles and pedestrians. The director also included archival film clips from television news anchors interviewing Colin Powell, Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf (as themselves), and Mariane Pearl, (seen as Jolie).
"Heart" is riveting and suspenseful despite its known outcome. However, once Mariane reports him missing, the film devolves into an overwhelming, detailed police procedural. Mariane, who is Cuban and French, makes a point of telling investigators that her husband is not a "practicing Jew," he was simply born of Jewish parents. Still, they worry this could be a factor and that Pearl could be seen as a CIA spy.
Asra’s home becomes a command center. Techies rewire everything for better communication, internet access, and wire-tapping, regardless of the effect this has on neighbors’ lines. Everyone becomes involved, from Danny’s cohorts at the Journal, his Middle-Eastern Bureau chief; the head of the US Consulate, Randall Bennett (Will Patton), to the Pakistani police captain, known as "Captain" (Infan Kahn). The search for Danny becomes unbelievably complex: thousands of cell phone calls are meticulously traced, innocent Pakistanis’ homes are raided. Bearded men are dragged from their beds as covered women protest their innocence. It is brought out that Musharraf’s government accuses India of trying to embarrass it by setting up the kidnapping; Pakistani intelligence accuse Asra of spying for India, more a sore point than the actual deed. Pakistani politicians and police officials discuss the political mess in Pakistan and its rivalry with India. While all this is going on, Mariane maintains her composure in hopes that Danny will soon be released.
Pearl’s subsequent video taped beheading turns up as evidence of his death. Eventually it is shown on Arabic television but is never seen in the US, though it still circulates on the Internet. What Winterbottom’s film completely ignores are the political issues surrounding Pearl’s kidnapping and murder, which are defined in the film by a plethora of facts, events and figures from the various countries involved. The director avoided making any political statements dealing with what exactly drove militants to kidnap and murder Pearl (because he was a Jew?), or looking at the US’s world-wide political culpability. The Bush administration rushed, Old Testament style, to retaliate within weeks of the 9-11 attack. It bombed Afghanistan based on US intelligence evidence that bin Laden (whom Clinton failed to deal with) was operating jihadi training camps there under the auspices of the Afghanistan government’s recognized Taliban faction. After the bombing, those Talibanis who weren’t killed along with thousands of innocent civilians, or captured and shipped to Guantanamo Bay, fled across the mountains into Pakistan, where to this day, officials believe bin Laden is still holed up.
Compared to "Road to Guantanamo," Winterbottom played it safe. Take the scene where "Captain" has his men chain murder suspect, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (Alyy Khan) by his wrists to the ceiling (he’s shown naked to the waist) and torture him. The exact means are not shown; we hear only excruciating screams of pain. Here, Winterbottom avoids the moralistic outrage he depicted in his documentary on the torture of "enemy combatants." (Saeed Sheikh only recently confessed to Pearl’s beheading.)
Confusing also is whose story is he trying to tell? That of a wealthy professional white man and his ethnically mixed but equally affluent, wife - - the ideal, cosmopolitan couple torn apart by fanatic idealism with the wife, like Ulysses’ stoic Penelope unemotionally waiting for her husband’s return? Or, a political suspense thriller shot in a foreign country. At no point did anyone talk about the US’s unprecedented, massive bombing of Afghanistan, a country already decimated by Russia’s invasion and twenty year occupation.
In her final BBC interview shown in the film, Jolie, as Mariane Pearl, makes the point of reminding the world that Danny was just one man who was murdered when probably ten or more were most likely killed that day and every day since. Actor Brad Pitt bought the film rights to Pearl’s book as a vehicle for Jolie, his soon to be, if not already wife. I imagine Michael Winterbottom was delighted to have the popular actress star in his film, as she would ensure its success at the box office. The real Mariane Pearl, now living and working in Paris with her five year old son, Adam, showed up on the red carpet at Cannes, arm in arm with Jolie, for the film’s opening.