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In 2002, people around the world were shocked by the gruesome murder of Daniel Pearl, an American Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped while working in Pakistan. A Mighty Heart tells the story of the efforts to find and rescue Pearl, as seen through the eyes of his wife, Mariane.
Angelina Jolie gives a strong performance as Mariane Pearl, a journalist who, at the time of her husband’s kidnapping, was pregnant with their son, Adam. Jolie adeptly portrays the strength with which Mariane handled the situation, turning to any person at any agency who could possibly help with the search.
The film passes at a frantic pace, in a blur of activity. It quickly cuts from one thing to the next, barely giving viewers a chance to take it all in. And the frantic feeling is only intensified by the frequently shaky camera work—so shaky, in fact, that I was suffering from a pretty serious case of motion sickness by the time it was over.
The greatest problem with A Mighty Heart, however (if you don’t suffer from motion sickness, that is), is that there isn’t much to tell. There are a lot of people involved—so many, in fact, that it’s hard to keep track of them all—and there’s a lot going on. But the pieces never come together to tell a story. The plot to kidnap Daniel Pearl (played by Dan Futterman) was apparently so carefully orchestrated that no one really knows where he was or when he was there or what actually happened to him. It’s known that, on the night he was kidnapped, he was scheduled to interview a controversial and potentially dangerous figure. He met with a number of people that day, before taking a cab to his interview. No one really knows the rest of his story—so, from there, the story shifts to Mariane.
But even Mariane’s story is lacking. The film constantly cuts from discussions around the table at her home to interrogations to phone calls to conversations to TV appearances to more meetings and more speculation. From time to time, it cuts to flashes from the day Daniel was kidnapped or to various moments in their relationship. But, considering the subject matter, the whole thing is surprisingly unemotional. Even one of the characters in the film, after seeing Mariane appear on TV, comments that you’d never believe her husband had just been kidnapped—and that’s the case for most of the movie. The story never engages the audience. They never get to know Mariane. They never really feel her pain. And, aside from one short scene, they never see it, either.
Since it’s based on the book written by Mariane Pearl, A Mighty Heart’s lack of emotion could possibly be attributed to the fact that Mariane is a journalist—someone whose job is to report the facts and not the feelings. And perhaps that’s just her way of facing the tragedy. No one can blame her for that. But had she let go of her journalistic approach—and had she written more of herself into the story—A Mighty Heart would have been a much more compelling film. It may be Mighty—but it’s unfortunatley lacking in Heart.
