Warning: This story contains spoilers.
Actually, this story is about spoilers. You know, those shocking twists and hairpin plot turns revealed by evil critics and overzealous friends who live to spill the beans.
Classic example: That chick in “The Crying Game”? Not really a chick. Sorry, the movie is 15 years old. The spoiler statute of limitation has long since expired.
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What happens when the spoiler in question is fact, not fiction? What if it’s something that anyone who reads the newspaper or watches TV should know? For instance, the fate of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002. The team effort to find and rescue him is dramatized in “A Mighty Heart,” opening Friday.
Angelina Jolie buries herself in the role of Mariane Pearl, a French radio journalist who was six months pregnant with Daniel’s son at the time her husband was kidnapped. The movie shows the harrowing four weeks in which Jolie’s Pearl copes with false hopes and false alarms, frustrations with investigators and bureaucrats on the case, and packs of reporters covering her husband’s abduction and murder.
This was one of the biggest international stories of the year just five years ago. Is it possible some have actually forgotten the ending?
Of course it is.
“I’m always amazed at what people don’t know,” says Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures. “We’re living in an age that’s like the Tower of Babel. People can’t process all the stuff that’s out there, and they forget things quickly.”
Bowles has his own real-life spoiler issues to worry about. Magnolia is distributing the bizarre, true-romance documentary “Crazy Love” currently in theaters. The film focuses on the twist-filled (and twisted) romance of Burt and Linda Pugach, which has played out in New York tabloids and on daytime talk TV for parts of four decades.
Everything in the film is a matter of public record. The one-sentence plot summary on imdb.com spoils two of the film’s three major twists in one fell swoop. As they used to say on “The X-Files,” the truth is out there.
Just because it really happened doesn’t mean everyone knows the details. Even if they once knew the details, it doesn’t mean they remember them all.
Not surprisingly, Dan Klores, the film’s director, would like to keep the element of surprise intact.
“My preference would be for people to not know anything about it going in,” he said. “But people have written features about the film, and I’m pleased that the audiences are still shocked. Even if people know what’s coming, they wonder: When is it coming? How is it coming?”
Spoiler rules would seem to apply differently depending on who’s doing the spoiling. You can always cover your ears and make “nah nah nah nah” noises if a friend is about to talk too much. Anyway, as Bowles said, “I think people generally have an innate sense of when and when not to give things away. It’s hard to police that.”
“A Mighty Heart” is not only based on a widely reported news story, but on Marianne Pearl’s 2003 memoir “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl.” Even if you know the outcome — and it’s a good bet that most media consumers do — the suspense of the story still puts a knot in your stomach. After all, everyone knew the tragic conclusion of “United 93” going into the film. That didn’t make it any easier, or less rewarding, to watch.
It’s all part of the excitement of watching movies. In an age when more and more documentaries employ the narrative strategies of fiction film, you must exercise care even when discussing recent history.
If you don’t, you’re just spoiling for a fight.