Given her tabloid noteriety, is it possible for Angelina Jolie to even register a performance anymore? That is, when on screen, can she make you believe that you are not looking at Angelina Jolie? That's just one of the questions going through my mind before seeing A Mighty Heart, the much-bruited film adaptation of Mariane Pearl's memoir starring Jolie as Pearl, co-produced by Jolie's companion Brad Pitt, and directed by Michael Winterbottom. (Pearl was the wife of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in early 2002. Mariane, also a journalist, was five months pregnant with their son at the time.)
The answer to the question is "kind of." Which is not to say that Jolie does not perform to the fullest of her capabilities, or that she is ineffective. But what makes her convincing here has as much to do with how she is shot as what she does.
The ever astute Winterbottom has cast the film as a procedural and an ensemble piece. Contrary to what many might have inferred from the production stills, official-and-non, that emerged during the making of the film, this is not a picture wherein a lone Mariane Pearl wanders wide-eyed through the streets of Karachi in a heroic search for her missing spouse. Mariane spends most of the time in the rented house of a friend and colleague (Archie Panjabi), surrounded by a partially ad hoc team—a Pakistani police captain, an American diplomat, a couple of Wall Street Journal staffers, etc.—trying to piece together the hows and whys of Pearl's abduction. (Pearl himself is played very well by Dan Futterman in his likable straight-shooter mode.)
Winterbottom appears to understand that no matter how much she is made up (here she is given a darker complexion and ringletted hair to better resemble the Afro-Cuban/Dutch Pearl; she looks pretty much just like herself regardless), there is no way an audience is going to look at her onscreen and NOT see Angelina Jolie. He employs a couple of strategies to tackle this. In the initial sequences of the film, he rarely puts her in the frame all by herself; she's always in part of some bustle, even if she's in the foreground. He also cuts very quickly; he doesn't give her any "moments." Thus, he makes her just a part of what he's weaving, much of which involves getting the viewer as deep as film possibly can get one into the feel of Karachi. Winterbottom's particularly good with environments, and he's also a deft, quick storyteller, and he juggles chronology in a way that gives us a quick, empathy-generating read of Daniel and Mariane's passionate involvement while moving the kidnap tale at almost full throttle.
Later, at moments when Mariane is most emotionally fraught, Winterbottom makes us not see Jolie by sort of not showing her to the viewer; he will shoot her from behind, or in silhouette. We don't get a full-on, well lit face-forward shot of Mariane screaming until she's giving birth to her and Daniel's son Adam. And by this point of the film, it works.
As does, I should say, the rest of the picture, which is involving and moving in the mode of another war-zone Winterbottom picture, Welcome to Sarajevo. Jolie and Pitt were very smart to get a director who doesn't do star turns to do Jolie's star turn. I dare say she's got at least an Oscar nomination locked.
Sounds like a classic case of making a genre more powerful by subverting it. Interesting that they cast a talented but not particularly well-known actor opposite AJ rather than a star of her magnitude, as if to prove she can share the screen with a "real" actor. I'm seeing it tomorrow, and you've definitely whetted my appetite.
Posted by: Sam Adams | May 21, 2007 at 11:13 AM