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player ready...The casting of superstar Angelina Jolie in “A Mighty Heart” raised eyebrows from the start.
She would play Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Mariane Pearl is French with an Afro-Cuban heritage. To play her, Jolie would have to adopt a strong accent, wear a wig and disappear into character, a process the larger-than-life actress hasn’t tried in some time.
Would Jolie’s celebrity overwhelm the story of Pearl’s 2002 kidnapping in Pakistan, the investigation and the grim, foregone conclusion? (Pearl’s beheading is not shown.)
“People ask me that all the time,” said Archie Panjabi, who plays Asra Nomani, Pearl’s Wall Street Journal colleague. “But then those people see the movie, and 5 minutes into it, that’s no longer an issue. Nobody has told me, ‘I kept seeing Angelina.'”
A quick look at early reviews of Jolie’s performance show that she has been able to extinguish her megawatt star power. The Denver Post, for example, said “Jolie vanishes into Mariane Pearl.”
Apparently, it was Pearl herself who suggested to producer Brad Pitt that Jolie play her in the movie. Pitt bought the rights to her memoir while it was still in manuscript form. Eventually, Pitt introduced Pearl to Jolie, and they became friends.
“I love that [Jolie’s] in it,” said Daniel Futterman, who plays Daniel Pearl in the film. “It puts the movie into the commercial arena. I’d like to see this movie not just be an art-house film. It’s a movie that gets people talking.”
The same can be said for Pearl, a woman who never played the grieving widow. She always remained calm. She pressed the issues of global terrorism. She didn’t cry on camera. She didn’t betray any hint of anger. She grieved in private.
“If you expect her to behave in a certain way, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s going to do that,” Futterman said. “She doesn’t pretend to have emotions she doesn’t feel, and she doesn’t succumb to the pressure of publicly showing emotions. Sometimes that confuses people.”
Small wonder that Pearl and Jolie — another woman whose public actions frequently confound onlookers — became fast friends. Pitt says being in the room with the women is like “sitting down with Roosevelt and Churchill.”
“Only better looking,” he told Newsweek.
“For me, so much of why this film is important to do is because I highly doubt there is anyone in this room who has more reason to hold hate inside her than Mariane, and she doesn’t,” Jolie said during a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. “That, I think, is a lesson for all of us.”
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A Mighty Heart (R)
Who’s in it: Angelina Jolie, Daniel Futterman
What it’s about: The kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl (Futterman), as retold by his journalist wife Mariane (Jolie).
Worth watching? ***
“Jolie’s intelligently tucked-in performance as Mariane avoids grandstanding, receding instead into the intricate tapestry of Michael Winterbottom’s tense and authentically relayed film.”
[ JAN STUART, NEWSDAY ]More Top Picks Training Fins