To bring the story of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to the big screen was one fraught with difficulties ever since Brad Pitt optioned the rights to Mariane Pearl’s (Daniel’s widow) book, “A Mighty Heart.” Who would be the right director? Who would play Mariane without over-dramatizing her agonizing story? How could you retell the awful true story of Pearl’s abduction in Pakistan by terrorists while he was researching a story on shoe bomber Richard Reid–without turning it into a rant against all Muslims?
Though I haven’t seen “A Mighty Heart” yet, (it opens today), the early word is that this film successfully avoids being what it easily could’ve been: “cheesy movie-of-the-week fare, over-the-top love story, violent action thriller, or blatant political screed,” as stated in the Beliefnet review of the film by Michael Kress.
And that is so relieving to me, as a Muslim who always believes that religiously- and politically-charged films, especially one based on a true story, should be done carefully and with a balance. In a recent interview with Newsweek, Mariane eloquently said about the film: “To me it’s a story about Danny being held by extremely intolerant people. And yet we, in that house in Pakistan–Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim–came together to find him. It’s as if two visions of the world were fighting each other.”
I hope that Mariane’s vision of the world, where–simply put–we all work together to stamp out any terrorist threatening to control us, is the one that will always prevail. So go out and see this film if you can.
Read Beliefnet’s review of “A Mighty Heart” and see clips from the film here.