Michael Winterbottom’s ‘A Mighty Heart’

Celebrity-addicted Cannes went wild on Monday, as an emaciated Angelina Jolie (with Brad Pitt) was in town to present Michael Winterbottom’s ‘A Mighty Heart’, in which she plays Mariane Pearl, the wife of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ reporter who was brutally murdered in Pakistan.
With its choppy editing and its documentary style, this taut film (in English and Urdu, with a little French) manages to be riveting despite the fact that one knows all too well how the investigation that followed Daniel Pearl’s disappearance ended. It was shot on location in Pakistan and it shows; it is not a slick, cleansed Hollywood film, and you can almost breathe the smoggy and sticky air of the city. The actors all gave outstanding, intense performances.
I found the film deeply moving and I was not alone. At the end of the screening, the actual Mariane Pearl gave the director and the cast a round of emotional hugs.