A Mighty Heart

DIRECTOR: Michael Winterbottom

From Ajmer to Hyderabad, Ludhiana to Karachi, to again Gujarat, these are times of hate. Hate that runs so deep that five years after consuming many in a riot, it can still burn strong.

Daniel Pearl could be another statistic in this cycle of hatred, a journalist kidnapped and killed by jehadis in Pakistan for his Jewish and American lineage. Instead, his wife Mariane 8212;five and a half months pregnant at the time, herself a journalist working in Pakistan 8212; ensured that this wouldn8217;t become an 8220;us versus them8221; story.

For her it was 8220;terrorists vs innocents8221;, everywhere and anywhere, and the month her Danny was killed, 8220;10 Pakistanis too were killed8221;. If the motive of the kidnappers was to terrorise her, she said, they had failed 8212; 8220;I am not terrorised.8221;

This is the message and story of A Mighty Heart, a film based on Mariane Pearl8217;s novel on the desperate hunt for Pearl after he was kidnapped, in a country where there are too many power centres and too little control.

Winterbottom with works like Welcome to Sarajevo and The Road to Guantanamo behind him gets this chaos and feel of Karachi just right, and contrasts it well with the calm interiors of the Pearl residence, despite the fact that it happens to be the headquarters of a truly worldwide hunt involving two countries8217; governments, two countries8217; detective forces and many senior dignitaries and journalists.

The characters and settings are well-chosen, from the local taxi driver to the ornately painted buses leaving for Muzaffarabad from a bustling station, to Pearl8217;s colleagues who tread gingerly around Mariane. The raids in grim restaurants and dimly lit, overflowing lanes, to loud, boisterous music, the questioning in grimy police lock-ups are all nicely captured. Even Ally Khan manages to be quite chilling as the notorious Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Angelina Jolie, despite her unsettling tan, gives a nuanced and remarkably restrained performance as Mariane. Of a woman called upon to be brave, strong and patient against all odds, for that was the only way of ensuring Pearl was returned alive.

Her grief is disquieting, and nobody watching it is untouched. Winterbottom brings this out beautifully. They may have political differences, but even the Pakistani investigators, led by the once-again remarkable Irrfan Khan, realise that Mariane8217;s tragedy isn8217;t hers alone.

However, while Winterbottom gives you an idea of Mariane8217;s world, he seems ambivalent about Pakistan. We get just one view of the country that lies at the heart of the Daniel Pearl story and is sought to be the centre of his message, and it isn8217;t a very flattering view.

A child constantly playing in the background at the Pearl residence, the maid8217;s child, always a little shabbily dressed, always just in the way, sitting on the floor, doesn8217;t help matters.

In a film about respecting differences and finding similarities, about forgiveness and acceptance, about a truly mighty heart, that little piece doesn8217;t quite fit in.