jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Angelina Jolie plays Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s docudrama about the kidnapping and murder of her husband, the journalist Daniel Pearl. After United 93 and several other pointless exercises in dramatizing the “War on Terror,” you might ask: why bother? We all know what happened to Daniel Pearl–what’s the use in rehashing the story? Is the agony of a pregnant widow-to-be really worth sitting through, even if it’s portrayed by an A-list movie star?

Fortunately, Michael Winterbottom, the prolific and versatile talent behind The Road to Guantanomo, 9 Songs, and Tristram Shandy, supplies a convincing answer. As journalists, the Pearls believed that open dialogue would lead to better understanding. Unlike United 93, which was devoid of context and took liberties with known facts, A Mighty Heart, based on Mariane Pearl’s book, constantly refers to events before and after, to people’s motivations, to reasons, arguments, and possible explanations. The film is dedicated to the Pearl’s son Adam, and like the child that never met his father, we have much to gain from a better understanding of the complexities of what happened, and why.

In films like In This World and The Road to Guantanomo, Michael Winterbottom has perfected a semi-documentary style of filmmaking that relies on real locations, small crews, and serendipity to achieve an immediacy that’s rarely seen on the screen. A Mighty Heart was shot in Pakistan, and the presence of Angelina Jolie, in a wig and sans make-up, rarely distracts from the sense that we’re watching real events. From the teeming streets of Karachi, where Daniel (Dan Futterman) is last seen taking a cab to the guarded house where Mariane anxiously awaits his return, the texture of the film is full of impressionistic details that we couldn’t have gathered from the news. For some reason I can’t quite explain, I was especially touched by the way Daniel holds the microphone of his hands-free headset up to his mouth when he speaks to his wife.

The film narrates, from Mariane’s perspective, the days after Daniel’s disappearance on the way to a dicey interview on January 23, 2002 until his death is confirmed nearly a month later. The Pearl house quickly turns into the headquarters for the uneasy alliance of Pakistani and American agencies who are conducting a hectic search, along with journalists and editors from the Wall Street Journal. Emails and documents are searched for clues. A whiteboard fills with a tangled web of contacts, fixers, and mysterious sheiks. Pearl’s Indian colleague Asra (Archie Panjabi) is a accused of being an Indian spy. A chef is brought in to keep pregnant Mariane well-fed. Colin Powell announces that negotiating with terrorists is out of the question for the U.S. government. Suspects are taken into custody and interrogated. Mariane gives an interview on CNN but refuses to cry. A Pakistani toddler plays in the yard, his arms hennaed with curly patterns. The movie’s frantic bustle releases into an explosion of grief when Mariane finds out what we already know.

A Mighty Heart opens next Friday.

A Mighty Heart. Michael Winterbottom, 2007. ****

The trailer:

Civic Duty steals liberally from Falling Down, Rear Window, and Dog Day Afternoon to milk September 11 paranoia for a contrived, rickety potboiler. Peter Krause (Nate from Six Feet Under) plays Terry Allen, a laid-off accountant who becomes obsessed with a middle-eastern neighbor he suspects to be a terrorist (Khaled Abol Naga.) Allen’s unsupportive wife (Kari Matchett) ditches him at the first sign of trouble, and the FBI agent assigned to the case (Richard Schiff) is no help. Finally, Allen investigates at gun point, and, being an accountant and all, utters hardboiled lines like these: “The checks come to more than double of what your tuition is!” Production values are strictly TV movie of the week, and the ending would have made me angry–if I still cared. Marcy’s thoughts: “If you went crazy and took a hostage, I don’t think I’d turn you in.” Thanks, baby! Love you too. Civic Duty opens May 4.

Civic Duty. Jeff Renfroe, 2006. *

• Civic Duty on Rotten Tomatoes
• The trailer

A harrowing movie about a female suicide bomber headed for Times Square. Unlike Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, which followed two Palestinian “suiciders” into Israel, Day Night Day Night refuses to give any kind of context. The nationality, ethnicity, religion, political and private motivations of the girl with the detonating knapsack (Luisa Williams) are never revealed; at most, a few hints are sprinkled throughout the movie. We don’t even know her name: Williams is merely credited as “she.” Instead of the socio-economic, cultural, moral and political web surrounding the characters of Paradise Now, first-time director Julia Loktev focuses on minutiae: the way “she” carefully bathes and trims her nails in the nondescript motel room where she meets hooded men who outfit her with cheap clothes, a fake ID, and the strap-on explosive device, the way the organizers makes sure she wears a seat belt on the way to her attack, the way the zipper of her jacket gets stuck when she fumbles to readjust the trigger of her bomb.

The first half of the movie is tightly controlled and claustrophobic; the second half, in Times Square, is sprawling and chaotic, but no less wrought with fear. The enormously expressive face of Luisa Williams carries most of the film’s weight; it wouldn’t be much of an overstatement to say that the movie is her face: fierce determination shot through with existential dread. Loktev seems to be saying that death, murder, and suicide will always remain mysteries to the living, and when all three are folded into the single push of a button, we can only approach this singularity like a Black Hole. There is no way we can truly understand what led to it, or what comes after.

Day Night Day Night opens on on May 9; we’ll have a full review on About.

Day Night Day Night. Julia Loktev, 2006. ****

The trailer:

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this South African biopic, the story of Patrick Chamusso (played by Derek Luke), a refinery worker and family man who turns freedom fighter after a vicious guardian of apartheid (Tim Robbins) tortures him and his wife Precious (Bonnie Henna.) The acting’s good, the images look crisp, and Robbins is a delicious villain. The story is gripping but unpleasantly so: when Patrick and Precious dance around the house to Bob Marley while their adorable girls study math and grandma grumbles in the corner, it’s obvious that none of it can last. Radicalized by the abuse Robbins dispenses with tight lips, Patrick visits ANC training camps in Mozambique and becomes what the white people in the movie call a terrorist. There are action-laden military raids and bombings, betrayal, soul searching, and finally some much-delayed redemption, and the film’s effects all work like they should–it’s hard not to get choked up at the final scenes, which then turn into a documentary coda showing the real-life Chamusso.

And still. Something about the workmanlike effectiveness of Philip Noyce’s direction (he made Rabbit-Proof Fence and the underappreciated The Quiet American, along with a few Clancy adaptations) didn’t sit right with me. Perhaps movies like Paradise Now have raised the bar on showing the inner struggles of men who confuse caring for their families with setting bombs, or perhaps I was looking for a more direct acknowledgement that the movie presents us with a reversal of current attitudes about terrorists/freedom fighters. Robbins’ character displays a modicum of complexity, but not enough to allow us to see ourselves in him. Opens October 27.

Catch a Fire. Philip Noyce, 2006. ***

[tags]film, 3 stars, south africa, philip noyce, tim robbins, derek luke, terrorism, racism, apartheid[/tags]