A Mighty Heart

Does A Mighty Heart—a vérité-style adaptation of journalist Mariane Pearl’s book about her husband Daniel’s kidnapping and subsequent beheading in 2002—belong to Angelina Jolie or director Michael Winterbottom? And could it ever belong to both? Certainly Jolie’s performance as Mariane is full of her distinctive, schmaltzy intensity; likewise, the prolific Winterbottom (whose The Road to Guantanamo and In This World, along with A Mighty Heart, form a post-9/11 trilogy of sorts) maintains his pet interest in gritty fact, even cutting Jolie’s screen time to trace the intricate tracks of Pakistani police as they root out and question suspects. Ultimately, A Mighty Heart belongs to the real Mariane, who, in close concert with producer Brad Pitt, ensured the film would be hers—that it would not just posit Daniel’s death as a tragedy, but would be used as an object lesson on the fate of journalists who, with neutrality and courage, pursue truth. There is, of course, a more difficult truth here, one which A Mighty Heart only grazes: the problem of affluent whites and Indians living in Karachi, ensconced in their compounds, fed by Western money, mining a different world, which they perhaps can never know. With Pearl at the helm, however, all A Mighty Heart can finally be is a tribute—one to which Jolie’s star power and Winterbottom’s intellect are exclusively beholden. WAIT FOR THE DVD

A Mighty Heart is now playing at Scotiabank Theatre (259 Richmond St. W.), Canada Square (2200 Yonge St.), SilverCity Mississaugua (3055 Vega Blvd.) and others.