Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 10:11 pm 
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The Road from Guantanamo

A Mighty Heart grows out of a high profile news story. A couple of months after 9/11, Mariane Pearl and her husband Daniel, a respected young Wall Street Journal bureau chief, were in Karachi working as journalists. Following a lead on the Richard Reid ("shoe bomber") story, Pearl (Dan Futterman) set up through intermediaries a meeting with a man considered dangerous. He told his wife (Angelina Jolie) that he might be late for dinner. That was the last she saw of him. The film is the story of Pearl's disappearance, the search for the kidnappers, and the then five-months-pregnant Mariane's ordeal.

We know how the story ends, yet Winterbottom keeps it exciting—up to a point. This is one of those movies whose subject matter and principals (despicable and pointless wrongdoers; high-minded and brave journalists; dedicated local investigators) make it risky to criticize, and it has gotten generally high marks. In particular Angelina Jolie, despite a corkscrew hairdo and fake accent both generally admitted to be ludicrous, has justifiably been not only forgiven but said to deliver a performance that's understated and noble. (She shows impressive self control, with one moment of private grief worthy of Greek tragedy.) The movie keeps track of a dizzying array of characters, including Namesake's Bollywood star Irfan Khan as the Pakistani CID's appealing Captain, the couple's Indian Muslim housemate and colleague Asra (Archie Panjabi), WSJ executive John Bussey (Denis O'Hare), gung-ho embassy official Randall Bennett (Will Patton), and plenty of others.

There's certainly realism in the comings and goings of consul generals and attachés and policemen and high government officials (a short film of Colin Powell is shown—his unwillingness to make a prisoner exchange or admit any wrongdoing at Guantánamo isn't encouraging for Mariane). Winterbottom knows how to stage constant raids, seizures of suspects and their hard drives, and interrogations that involve torture and hanging men from the ceiling—without seeming the least manipulative or Hollywood-y.

But as Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker, everything in the film, typically for this director, "lies an inch short of disarray." This may be looked upon as a documentary-style "police procedural," but it dares you to follow it, let alone be moved by it. Winterbottom is adept at choreographing chaos, but the effect is too diffused to make the events emotionally involving. There is some of the excitement of the terrific English TV miniseries Traffik (which Soderbergh tried to capture in his adaptation Traffic)—but the separate storylines aren't as neatly delineated as those of Traffik and hence the suspense is intermittent and the final outcome. . .seems to be the birth of a baby boy. The raison-d'être may lie in Mariane's TV appearances, which show her at her best—triumphantly unresponsive to the terrorists' efforts to arouse fear and hate. But these are very didactic moments in a movie that already, despite its documentary realism, barely skirts the edge between showing and telling in making its points.

The film is the product of Brad Pitt's enthusiasm about Marianne Pearl's book, subtitled The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Daniel Pearl, and the choice of Winterbottom to direct was approved by Marianne. Ms. Jolie's involvement is hardly unexpected. Though known as an engagé filmmaker, this time Winterbottom is something of a hired gun. On the other hand, he's not only good at this kind of thing, but knows the area: he was in Peshawar filming In This World when the news of Pearl's death came, and then he made The Road to Guantánamo, which deals with the three Brits from Tipton who were captured in Afghanistan and wound up in the Bush administration's permanent offshore holding cell for terrorism suspects. The US doesn't look so good in The Road to Guantánamo, but A Mighty Heart's missing hero is an American good guy. The new film also calls attention to the plight of journalists, who have been dying off at a shocking pace in recent years. But why was it made? To satisfy Mr. Pitt, and to illustrate Ms. Jolie's nobility? The Road to Guantánmo shows the English-speaking and particularly the American audience things they may not know or even want to know. A Mighty Heart offers edification, perhaps, but not enlightenment. Much is made of the fact that Danny Pearl was Jewish, and proud of it (an idealized and glamorous Jewish wedding ceremony is cut in as flashback)—but also that the Cuban-French Mariane was a Buddhist. In fact it emerges only that Pearl was chosen because he was an American. The act of kidnapping and killing him was senseless and fruitless. Perhaps as pointless as the US detention of the Tipton Three. But the contrast (or the balance) is not underlined. A Mighty Heart celebrates bravery, but its origins—a book by the widow; the whim of a rich movie star featuring his glamorous consort—aren't as pure as those of some of Winterbottom's previous work. It's a little ironic that this has gotten so much more attention and praise.

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