of the search — cellphone records and interrogations and e-mail tracking — is set against the ordinariness of life in a city, and a home. The Pearls lived colonial-style in an airy house maintained by locals: as the search churns on, the housekeeper sweeps the corners and the security men nod, sympathetic to their employer’s turmoil, exuding a fear of being implicated. The toddler child of a worker plays at the feet of the investigators, a constant reminder that Pakistan is not just a nation, but a nation of people with inner lives that veer in all directions.
Angelina Jolie, left, and Dan Futterman portray journalists Mariane and Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart. The film’s liberal view — the word “dialogue” is uttered over and over, but “retribution” never is — clearly belongs to Mariane Pearl. A practicing Buddhist, she is not the powerless grieving widow the world might have expected.
When Mariane appears on television to plea for her husband’s return, she ignores subtle pressure to capitalize on her swollen belly. Afterward, a producer whispers that she didn’t cry enough. It’s a dingo-ate-my-baby moment of pop culture persecution: How dare anyone (especially a woman) appear so controlled in a situation so out of control?
But Mariane Pearl’s persona is uniquely anti-victim; she’s fierce, and devoid of the public, very American breakdowns that turn unspeakable tragedies into entertainment. In this way, the casting of Jolie as Pearl almost makes sense: a beautiful iconoclast as a beautiful iconoclast. Jolie has certainly worked hard to nail the complicated accent, and her skin is appropriately baked, her hair Marge Simpson-high.
But the essential Angelina Jolie-ness is hard to get past. When Mariane finally breaks, keening on the ground after learning of her husband’s death, you do think, ever so briefly, Hey, Angelina Jolie is keening! Not bad!
Through no fault of her own, Jolie’s efforts as an actor can’t quite vanquish her life as a celebrity. Perhaps this is another reason why Jolie was intrigued by the film (which her partner, Brad Pitt, produces): Pearl’s murder was broadcast on the internet, and so the story is also about spectacle, and the end of privacy. The film shows the murder only as a horrified reflection in the faces of those who discover the tape.
While playing the execution would have been vile, somehow this particular alternative feels too restrained; surely there’s a halfway point between prurience and total abstinence. Winterbottom, usually a wonderfully inventive director, needed to allow us to experience the sheer evil of that act somehow, but this pivotal scene is strangely muted. The fact that Pearl’s murder did happen proves that we are not above evil, or exempt from it, and the film has to force us to confront this unconfrontable truth.
But Winterbottom plays safe, unwilling to offend, even though, by God, we are already so very offended. In the aftermath, Mariane Pearl tells a group of friends that she refuses to feel “terrorized,” rendering the murder pointless. It is a brave and strong stance for her to take personally, but maybe of the search — cellphone records and interrogations and e-mail tracking — is set against the ordinariness of life in a city, and a home.
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