From Karachi to Cannes: A Review of "A Mighty Heart"

The film A Mighty Heart raised a number of urgent questions and issues for me.  As a film dramatization of a real life event--one that happened not too long ago--I was interested to see how Michael Winterbottom's film would reinterpret or reproduce the familiar and well-documented events surrounding the Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder.  I also was intrigued how Angelina Jolie would pull off the part of Mariane Pearl and if and how her star presence would affect the film.  After watching the film, I found myself thinking about the ethics of translation, friendship and fidelity, and Hollywood's self-congratulatory interest in the political.  I wrote reams of critique and observation.  And I mean reams.  I could have kept going.  I need to publish the albatross now.  Beyond the jump, there lie dragons.

From Karachi to Cannes: A Review of A Mighty Heart

In her memoir, A Mighty Heart, Mariane Pearl recounts the momentary relief that she and her colleagues experience when they finally uncover the identity of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a pivotal suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl:

By the time the American consul, John Bauman, joins us, our excitement is at a peak.  Sensing an imminent happy ending, we are indulging in silly speculation.  Our adventure has turned into a Hollywood movie.  The casting of Winona Ryder in the role of Asra is unanimously approved.  Bussey will be played by James Woods, Randall by Steven Seagal.  Bauman joins the game gracefully.  "It will be a remake of The Untouchables," he says; and because he wears the same type of waistcoat, Dost will be our Elliot Ness. (159)

A sign of their steadfast optimism, they do not speculate on the kind of movie that could be made if things do not turn out well.  In the happy "remake," one wonders, who would play Mariane?  Who would play Daniel?

There was no happy ending, but, all the same, the Hollywood movie was made.  If translation is arguably a mode of interpretation, then what interpretation or reading of the events does the film translation of Mariane's memoir offer?  For those who did not follow these events, have not read and will not read the memoir, or perhaps seek to connect in a different way to a familiar story, a dramatization of the Pearl case potentially serves an important, pedagogical purpose.  Like so many stories without a "happy ending," its narrative continues to change, move, translate and accumulate (news clips, interviews, articles, etc).  The film, one hopes, should participate in an ongoing, evolving dialogue about this event, its aftermath, and what it teaches or could teach us.

A Mighty Heart premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival, garnering warm reviews and accolades for its star, Angelina Jolie, who plays Mariane Pearl.  To spark public interest for the film, Jolie, Mariane Pearl, and producer Brad Pitt (Jolie's romantic partner) participated in countless interviews and press conferences on its behalf.  In the past few months, Jolie has been featured on the cover of several magazines, at times sharing the spotlight with Mariane Pearl. Her interviews in June and July promoted the film as one of her many humanitarian causes, and occasionally offered tantalizing glimpses into her personal life with Pitt and their international brood.  At the time, the Council on Foreign Relations was considering Jolie's nomination, and the fact that this coincided with the release of A Mighty Heart seemed either a propitious meeting of her interests or crass self-promotion.  (A further sign of how Jolie's celebrity mingles uncomfortably with her political/humanitarian interests, news of Jolie's CFR confirmation first appeared "exclusively" in People magazine, a couple of weeks before the movie premiered. Despite the generous propaganda, the movie has failed, so far, to cash in on its hype, which really means that it has failed to cash in on Jolie's star power.   

Perhaps the film was "too depressing to be released during the early summer," but I can't buy this argument.  This is also the summer that gave us films like Away from Her and La Môme, both serious, emotionally "heavy" films that "risked" summer releases but have received considerable critical acclaim and have fared well (relative to their budgets) at the U.S. box-office (I mention the U.S. box office specifically because U.S. audiences generally face the accusation of preferring light film fare, especially, so the argument goes, in the summer.). Budgeted at around $16 million, A Mighty Heart has grossed, to date, $9 million domestically.  Reports of Jolie's salary vary, with some articles claiming that the actress accepted a reduced fee of $1 million to do the film, but IMDB continues to report a $10 million figure. If the latter is indeed true, the producers drastically underestimated Jolie's ability to carry an independent, political film.  A Mighty Heart may fare better when it opens to an international audience and with DVD sales, but, so far, the domestic audience has kept it's distance.  Part of the blame certainly rests on Jolie's overexposure, and her complicity in creating a media image that obscures any part she plays, something which has made it difficult, I suspect, for potential viewers to "buy" her as Mariane Pearl.  But rather than dwell immediately on how celebrity culture undermined what could have been an important film, I'd like to continue my comments on the film with a closer consideration of how the film and memoir compare.  I'm particularly interested in which elements the film chose to--or chose not to--translate from the memoir and offer a reading of these choices.

The film, like the memoir, recounts in somewhat non-linear fashion the events set into motion on the morning of January 23, 2002 when Pearl left home for a long day of interviewing.  His final interview was one that Pearl had pursued avidly for weeks: a meeting with Sheikh Gilani, a major religious figure reportedly linked to "shoe bomber" Richard C. Reid.  Aside from occasionally intercalated scenes of the Pearls preparing for and going about their day, the bulk of the film takes place in the provisional headquarters that Mariane, Pakistani and U.S. authorities, and WSJ journalists set up in Asra Nomani's Karachi home (Nomani was a colleague of Daniel Pearl and a good friend of the couple).  Interwoven images of Karachi street life, excerpted footage of press conferences, and an opening montage recapping the events that brought Daniel and Mariane Pearl to Karachi attempt to contextualize the film in real political and cultural landscapes.  These scenes of real footage attempt to create a seamless sense of realism with the parts of the film that are staged and dramatized. 

One of the first challenges facing a film version of A Mighty Heart is the ways in which the average American moviegoer's relationship to the media has changed since 9/11.  The Daniel Pearl case is a good example of how the increased availability of media on the web made it possible for the average person to have access to information that traditional news media outlets otherwise would have controlled, curated, and packaged.  A video of Pearl's murder surfaced first on the internet, uploaded by the perpetrators themselves, and by the time excerpts of it reached news stations, many individuals had already seen the entire, gruesome act. Aside from a few photographs and video excerpts, the film resists reenacting Pearl's death or speculating on the details of his captivity.  In this decision, it attempts to honor the spirit of Mariane's memoir, which challenges the "mechanical reproducibility" of Pearl's death by offering glimpses into those life events that are under memory's sole custodianship and care.  The book, with its delicately sketched vignettes about Pearl's life, attempts to leave us with more hopeful, lasting images of Danny. But, as several reviewers have noted, the film's depiction of Daniel Pearl is very slight, and in making Daniel Pearl such a marginal figure (in his own story, no less) the film lost the opportunity to show viewer's something that they couldn't find on YouTube or CNN.  To a large extent, the film's attempt to create a shared realism (or, "pretend realism," to quote Armond White) between real and staged footage doesn't work, in large part because the dramatizations of existing footage (e.g., Mariane Pearl's interviews) don't transform or alter the original.  They are, basically, literal translations.  On the other hand, this literalness serves the film's purpose of conflating the real with the dramatized, the book and the film, even Jolie and Mariane Pearl.  In one clip from the film's Cannes press conference, I observed that when Mariane Pearl was asked a question, the camera would often linger on Jolie. 

This brings me to the film and how it frames its particular objectives in relation to the memoir.  In a voiceover for the theatrical trailer of A Mighty Heart, Angelina Jolie's voice, tinged with a "French" accent, tells us that "this film is for our son, so he knows that his father was an ordinary man, an ordinary hero." Those who have read the book will recognize this language from the prologue and note the provocative substitution of "film" for "book."  I read this as one of many ways that the film positions itself as a translation that replaces its original, the memoir. It appeals to the idea that those who will not read the book can glean the same insights and lessons from the film. But is this really the case?  Nomani notes how the film lifts and alters the language of the prologue in ways that not only betray but also trivialize the original story:

In the prologue to her book, Mariane wrote to her son: "I write this book for you, Adam, so you know that your father was not a hero but an ordinary man." In a movie voiceover, that dedication becomes: "This film is for our son so he knows that his father was an ordinary man. An ordinary hero."

But there weren't any real heroes in the story of Danny's tragedy. Danny would have said he was just doing his job. When he went off that day in Karachi, he didn't give any impression that he thought what he was doing was especially dangerous. He just had a story he wanted to pursue and an interview he thought would help him. After he vanished, I don't think any of us, not even Mariane, did anything particularly courageous, either. We each had a duty to try to find him -- either as professionals or because of the bonds of friendship or family.

....recasting a story just so we can tell ourselves that we've found a hero is too easy. It's the quickest way to convince ourselves that what happened wasn't such a bad thing, that it had redeeming value, that we can close the book on it and move on with our lives.

For me, "A Mighty Heart" and all the hype surrounding it have only underscored how cheap and manufactured our quest for heroism has become. Paramount even launched an "ordinary hero" contest to promote the movie. "Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero," its Web site shouts. "Win a trip to the Bahamas!" (Nomani, "A Mighty Shame")

The "ordinary hero" contest no longer appears on Paramount's website. 

In the memoir, Pearl's private memories become an integral part of the "investigation narrative."  One reminiscence that I found particularly moving concerned her "first date" with Danny: months after first meeting at a dance party, Danny took a red-eye train from London to Paris to make Mariane breakfast.  The film's flashbacks reduce these stories so extensively that unless you've read the memoir, you'll have little idea what they reference.  Nomani may very well have a point when she remarked, after seeing the film, "Danny had a cameo in his own murder."  Dan Futterman, who plays Danny, undertakes a role that requires him to do little more than gaze lovingly on his wife or look focused on his work; his performance falls considerably short of conveying the charm, irreverence, and joie de vivre that family and friends attributed to Danny.  Most of the characters in the film are hastily drawn, but shallow characterizations aside, without the more substantive personal scenes that the memoir provides, without the warmth and even humor that Mariane's memories lend to the story of the investigation, the search for Danny loses what I think of as "a sense of Danny." Roger Ebert argues that in relegating Daniel Pearl to the edges of the narrative, the film emphasizes the extent to which "the kidnappers transported [Daniel] outside the zone of human values and common sense."  But I think that Daniel's slight presence in the film has more to do with the film's failure to take us to places that lie outside of Mariane Pearl's gaze.  Though the film's sweeping montages and juggling of real footage suggest an effort to provide a panoptic narrative of the events, it's basically Mariane's story. This commitment to her story, repeatedly reaffirmed by Winterbottom, Jolie and Pitt, marks a distinct shift from the objective of the book, which is subtitled "the brave life and death of my husband, Danny Pearl."  Somewhere in the process of making this into a film, backed by Hollywood's star machine, Mariane replaced Danny.

Also absent in the film is the information Mariane provides on the background of the kidnappers and the interconnectedness of global terrorist networks.  Early in the film, Pearl/Jolie asks "how do you find one man in this city?" but what also emerges in the book, more so than in the film, is that this entanglement called "global terrorism" has developed its own shadow city, one that has become almost impossible to trace.  Fascinating descriptions of Karachi's infrastructure and its impact on the investigation also reveal the extent to which basic technological resources are lacking in "the war against terror." One scene describes how authorities spend an entire day manually following a phone line to find its user, since phone lines, like individuals, tend to migrate undocumented throughout the city.  This moment illustrates the challenge of "finding one man in this city" more effectively than Winterbottom's reliance on clichéd footage of Karachi's teeming traffic. 

Although the search for Danny foregrounds the memoir, Mariane also persuasively shows how much is at stake in bringing him home.  Pearl was one of many journalists sent to high-risk zones without adequate preparation.  According to Mariane, he wrote a detailed memo to his editor, John Bussey, outlining the precautions that the WSJ needed to take before sending journalists into high-risk zones but implementing these measures took time. The "war on terror" suddenly increased demand for war correspondents, and many U.S. papers, including the Wall Street Journal, were not well-equipped to meet this demand. Until Pearl's murder, the idea that journalists were a target of terrorists was almost unthinkable, but the case also demonstrated that in the world of global terror there are no longer any safe professions, no safe affiliations, and no safe places.  Unfortunately, according to Mariane, there was no official response to Pearl's memo.  When the WSJ handed over computers belonging to Al Qaeda members to the CIA, and then publicized the fact, it very well may have compromised the safety of all U.S. foreign correspondents in high-risk zones. 

But the idea that everyone is a suspect cuts both ways.  In the search for the kidnappers and killers of Daniel Pearl family members of suspects are taken into custody as "bargaining chips," later, as the trial is underway, extraordinary renditions of individuals who may or may not be involved take place.  In the film, the "Captain" (head of a Pakistani counter terrorism unit, played by Indian actor Irrfan Khan) states unequivocally how Danny's kidnappers will be found: "we'll fight kidnappers with kidnappings."  Mariane Pearl, who has no time to spare, does not dispute this. It is in such moments that Mariane Pearl and the team on Zamzama Street strike me as their most human, complex and flawed.  In the memoir, Mariane relates the details of Laura Bush's personal visit and their candid conversation on global terror.  "I tell her that my impression is that the terrorists know much more about America than America knows about them, which is why the West needs to embrace the world better" (217).  In both the film and memoir, the feeling that "terrorists can't be reasoned with" hovers uncomfortably around "a commitment to dialogue."  The film had the opportunity to offer an inquiry and/or critique on this tension, present in Mariane's narration.  Instead, it just reproduces it.   

Although Jolie delivers one of her better performances, her ubiquitous, hyperbolic media presence makes it incredibly difficult to watch her on screen and imagine her as anyone but herself.  The trend in Hollywood, when playing real life characters, has been to undergo a total transformation.  These incarnations have been amply rewarded over the past few years.  Just as a literal translation is not always the most true or faithful rendering, transformation is not always necessary to convey the essence or personality of a person. In other words, you don't necessarily have to look like, speak like, or move like the person in order to convey a sense of who they are. But this is an academic argument.  Hollywood's history of race relations is very very messy and can't be neatly resolved by appeals to global belonging.  Both Jolie and Mariane Pearl wish for us to believe that the casting of Jolie as a biracial woman is not problematic.  "Aren't we past this?" Mariane retorted when asked to discuss the issue.  "I am Cuban, but I'm also Dutch. Should a Dutch person play me? It's not about skin color, it's about how a person behaves that matters."  If this was indeed the position of Pearl, Jolie and the filmmakers, then I wonder why they bothered with the considerable make up job they performed on Jolie.  Why not simply cast her as she is, without alteration, if indeed, only the person "within" matters?  In fact, why not cast the entire film without regard to ethnicity, race, culture and religion? 

In a film that  presents itself as a true and literal dramatization of real life events, the casting of Jolie is a legitimate concern, particularly given that the movie otherwise consistently casts along racial, ethnic and cultural lines (Dan Futterman/Daniel Pearl, Archie Punjabi/Asra Nomani, Irrfan Khan/The Captain, for example).  Pearl's and Jolie's refusal to engage viewers on this point is not just disappointing, it also points to a significant disconnect between the filmmakers and their public.  Their position--that we simply accept the casting of Jolie because it has been "blessed" by Mariane--is not one that sits well with a thinking audience.  For a film that purports to open dialogue, much of the conversation surrounding the film has been carefully managed, even to the point of hypocrisy.   Charlie Rose, usually a journalist I can rely on to hone in on the tough questions, conducted an extraordinarily mediocre interview with Pearl and Jolie that didn't progress beyond the tiresomely familiar niceties:  Mariane's strength, the beauty of her message, the friendship between Adam Pearl and Maddox Jolie Pitt.  In the memoir, Mariane's commitment to dialogue, her refusal to "break down" publicly, her commitment to life and love are part of an emotional trajectory that also involves impatience, outrage, break down and even moments of hate.  Jolie's performance encompasses many of these emotional states but, like Futterman's portrayal of Danny, it lacks the nuance and complexity of a portrait drawn by a less friendly hand.  Likewise, Jolie's aggressive participation in promoting the film, I would argue, has distracted honest and open debate.  When asked if the allure of the Hollywood stars backing this project "impaired [her] better judgment," Nomani replied: "I think there is a reason why we call actors and actresses "stars." They have a dazzling allure that can be blinding."  Charlie Rose was positively blinded.

In one scene that appears halfway through the film, we see Pearl leave a news station after giving an interview, with the media in avid pursuit.  Light bulbs flicker around her stoic profile.  The clearly drawn parallelism between this media frenzy and celebrity paparazzi culture, with which Jolie herself contends, seems to communicate the ways in which the media--from the reporters flanked outside of Yehuda and Ruth Pearl's home to the accessibility of the "death video" on the internet--co-opt private lives; but when your film "happens" to star a celebrity actively complicit in the making of her media image, this moment starts to work more effectively as a damning critique of the filmmaker's decision to harness mega-celebrity in order to carry this story to the masses.  I was reminded here of J. Hoberman's incisive comment on the film's reliance on star power:  "The movie is fundamentally a solo, and the creepiest thing about A Mighty Heart is the ease with which this terrible tale becomes a meditation on divadom."

This is A Mighty Heart remade.  From Karachi to Cannes...a red carpet unfurls.

Bibliography:

Pearl, Mariane (with Sarah Crichton).  A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.  (My copy features Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman on the cover. Conflation complete!)

Comments

[Anil Dash]

I think it's interesting how everyone will dance right up to the line of calling Mariane Pearl a Terror Widow Diva, but won't actually come out and say it. I know it's gauche, but isn't it obviously the truth?

Also, lollipop please.

[adriana]

J. Hoberman's review pretty much makes this case. Other reviews come close (even mine) but, yes, no one says it so plainly. Although I guess you just did!

[tuckergurl]

This quote is wild: "Danny had a cameo in his own murder."

This essay is pretty comprehensive. This merits a face to face convo.

I like that you focused on how art changes when it goes from one genre (memoir) to another (film). As a filmmaker, I am fascinated with what people deem dramatic and why. It fascinates me that Marianne's story is seen as more "dramatic" than her husbands. Is that because she is still alive? I guess that references Anil's comment in a way.

[Matty]

It's funny, for someone who consumes a huge amount of media, I pay very little attention to the gossip world. Maybe this is why Jolie's off-screen life didn't really effect my opinion and I quite enjoyed the film.

I think if I had done the same amount of research and had known the backstory as well, I would have been more sensitive to Jolie's star presence. Even after reading this, I'm sure I'd have a different reaction if I watched the film again.

I often make the distinction between actors and personalities. For instance, Ed Norton is an actor, Julia Roberts is a personality. Angelia seems to be more of an actor than personality, but maybe that's just because I try to tune out the press. Further cementing the point, I remember seeing the preview and not knowing it was Jolie until her name appeared on screen.

I prefer Tootsie pops, but I'm not picky.

[John]

And this is why we fight the War on Terror.

[John]

BTW, I also love the description of parallel, inscrutable "shadow cities." It brings to mind just how much cartography is itself a matter of narrative and translation.