Misstropolis

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A Mighty Heart

by Tom Meek

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Ok, the TOMB RAIDER franchise was insipid mayhem, but who better than Angelina Jolie, with her svelte, curvaceous figure and fleshy pursed lips, to play the kick-ass heroine that had become more that just a video game fantasy to many a boy with joystick fever?

Let’s not forget she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as a strung-out psych ward patient in GIRL INTERRUPTED. And all the Billy Bob blood vial, baby adopting, Brad stealing, public squabble with daddy, and weird incestuous moment with her brother at the Academy Awards stuff only serves to make her more interesting.

I mention all this only because it might cause some to think Jolie’s career will unravel at pace with her personal life; that she might become unhinged, poisoned by tabloid hype, another career casualty of the paparazzi. Not so, at least based on what I saw in A MIGHTY HEART, the riveting portrayal of Mariane Pearl’s ordeal during the odd weeks her husband is held hostage, and later murdered, by a terrorist organization in Pakistan. Jolie’s more than up to the task, convincing in anguish, courage and marital bliss. Throughout it all I was struck by Jolie’s obvious tribute to her real life counterpart without ever seeming victimized by the situation’s cruel reality.

Beyond Jolie’s Oscar-worthy turn (and I will note here that there are a few egregious moments when the camera lingers too long on her howling in deep-seated emotional distress), the story gets some masterful brush strokes from Michael Winterbottom. If you’ve ever seen WELCOME TO SARAJEVO, THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO or even 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, then you know the director is well versed in edgy, in-your-face docudramas. It even seems that Winterbottom, in flashes, recycled some of the footage from GUANTANAMO to underscore the terrorists’ demands for the release of captives held at the notorious Cuban detainee camp.

The epicenter of course is Daniel Pearl, the abducted Wall Street journalist, who happens to be Jewish. The film stresses this as a major lynchpin in his demise. He’s played by Dan Futterman, the amateur screenwriter who won the Academy Award for CAPOTE. Husband and wife never appear together onscreen in present time, but they do in small, artful flashbacks. Winterbottom and the two actors go to great depths to project a convincing love that is soul-wrenching and unbreakable. It’s the heart of the film, yet all around it, Winterbottom crafts a gripping thriller that moves with greater urgency than an episode of 24. A crack team of Pakistani intelligence officers (led by the redoubtable Irfan Khan last seen in Mira Nair’s THE NAMESAKE), under intense international scrutiny, go to every extreme (including torture) to track down Pearl and his captors.

A MIGHTY HEART opens with high stakes as Pearl sets off to meet a dubious contact, and never lets down. The fact that you know how it ends doesn’t matter. As in UNITED 93, the portrayal of a person or group of people pushed to the brink yet refusing to give in no matter how dire the circumstances is thoroughly compelling, as if the story were never told before. The film’s confluence of compassion, honesty and artistic integrity creates a universal experience from a deeply personal tragedy.