By Chris Corpus | Image property of respective holders.
A Mighty Heart
A Mighty Heart is the adaptation of Mariane Pearl’s memoirs about her husband Daniel Pearl’s abduction. Her story is both fascinating and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, this movie does not live up to the story it tried to tell. In fact, the whole DVD seems to have an air of self-worth that is far above what it actually is.
DVD Review: A Mighty Heart
While Angelina Jolie delivers a powerful and moving experience, the storytelling bounces around in choppy and confusing manner. The shaky camera technique is overused and abused in this film. The editing cuts all over without a clear sense of cause and effect – events and discoveries occur with unclear relationships to the prior scenes. What does that mean really? It doesn’t make sense why things happen. This repeatedly takes the audience out of the story and requires a vested interest that most people don’t have. Finally, having been given no time to form a relationship with the characters, the film devolves into a question of ‘why do we care about these people?’ Jolie brings back some connection when her character must finally face the horrible loss of her husband. Outside of that, it’s hard to care about these people.
It is sad that the story is told so poorly, because the purpose of the film is noble. Throughout the special features and the film, we are constantly reminded that the dangers journalists face in covering in-depth world news are serious. The problem is, the film is told so poorly that the message gets lost, and the special features beg for attention so much that they become annoying.
Among the special features there is a PSA featuring Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour, while pleading for the safety of journalists, speaks with an air of arrogance. Watching the PSA, I felt as if Amanpour was telling me I was a bad person. It was very insulting and would have turned me against the efforts of the Committee to Protect Journalists, if I had not already committed my support to the group. A documentary following the making of A Mighty Heart was entertaining and it was interesting to hear the reasons why the actors wanted to do this film.
This movie is made for journalists and those that are interested in the affairs of journalism. Outside of that small group, this film and DVD will unfortunately push the general public away. If only the filmmakers had made the film for people other than journalists and NPR listeners, it may have achieved its noble goal.
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