A Mighty Heart

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Sonic Youth
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Mister Tee, watch Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down", or the Beirut section of brother Tony's "Spy Game" (if you can stomach it.) The technique between the three is very similar, and empty. They all engage in lots of cutaways to disrupt the central focus of a scene, and in so doing they go out of their way to exoticize the setting. Frat boy jokiness is besides the point.
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Post by kooyah »

The Original BJ wrote:Her big breakdown scene (after hearing of her husband's death) consists of a long screaming fit that I thought any halfway decent actress could have pulled off just as well.

Well, a similar type of scene managed to convince people that Halle Berry could act, so...
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Post by Mister Tee »

I don't really see the comparison to Bruckheimer's directors, who pretty uniformly produce films with completely fraudulent, glossy fashion-magazine-like visuals, as well as intense love of violence for pure adrenaline, and frat-boy jokiness. I don't see any of these things on display in A Mighty Heart, which shoots for flat realism almost as much as United 93 did.

I'm (I think) with BJ in that I thought the directing was the film's most impressive element -- elevating it, at least much of the way, beyond pure journalism. I loved the way Winterbottom used minute cuts within scenes, even within conversations. It was somewhat like what Greengrass went after in Bourne Supremacy, but there the result was irritating and dizzying. Here, the effect is to make us feel we're seeing the essential moments of the story and not one millisecond more. The film, from its opening frames to the tracking down of Sheikh Omar, feels like it's taking place in a single breath. I was completely held for this stretch.

The problem is, after that, the pace slackens a bit, and at that point what you've both suggested becomes apparent: the film doesn't have any subject beyond this tragic news event -- one to which any news-watcher already knows the outcome -- and there's no further unraveling to take place: the vile tape arrives out of the blue, and has no dramatic heft to justify the frantic pursuit of the film's earlier section.

I'd still say I liked the film, but then I'm a fan of the true-crime genre, even mediocre examples thereof. And to that point I have to add I don't agree all investigation stories are boring. They aren't only if you like the genre. (Of course, I find 95% of westerns boring; so, if I remember my French phrases correctly, chacun a son gout)

As for Jolie: I've always viewed her more as someone with star quality than an actress. Even in early, minor stuff like Playing by Heart, she displayed a dynamic quality that just jumped off the screen at you. Her Oscar role was pretty cliched stuff, but I imagine those who hadn't seen her much prior would have detected those same qualities and over-rated them. As I see it, she's evolved far more as movie star than actress, though efforts like this show she has ambition, much like her main squeeze. I think she does a good job of losing herself in the role of Marianne -- I don't think she's at odds with the film -- but by the same token she doesn't do anything so special she couldn't have easily been replaced. And her big scream was probably the falsest note in the entire film.
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Post by Reza »

I think Jolie's life is dramatic (and colorful) enough. Probably difficult and tedious for her to replicate that through screenplays on the big screen.

She has, however, made a place for herself in this world - and in Hollywood history (the Oscar).
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Post by The Original BJ »

Sonic, I mostly agree with your take on the film. I say "mostly" because I think I liked it a little more than you did, mainly because I appreciated that raw style. It's not simply that A Mighty Heart doesn't look like a mainstream film; it's that the unglamorous photography (and especially economic cutting) help the film avoid descending into bathos. The film doesn't wear its emotions on its sleeve, and I appreciated the resistance to sentimentality that could very easily have plagued a project like this.

However, the problem with pursuing such an unemotional approach is that, if enough care isn't taken to engage the mind, the result is a film like this: one that feels very distant. As Sonic says, A Mighty Heart isn't really about anything. It recounts the details of the Pearl investigation (which are involving enough, I guess), but the film barely has a thought in its head about why this story needed to be told in this way. The word that came to my mind wasn't "perfunctory" but "unnecessary," an horrible thing to call a film about such a tragic event, but one I feel is appropriate given the film's total ignorance of the political, cultural, and even personal issues that should give this story weight.

And now I have to make a confession that I hope doesn't sound mean: I haven't ever really liked a film with Angelina Jolie. For a while, I used to think the actress wasn't to blame, that it wasn't her fault for selecting unworthy projects (or, in same cases -- i.e. The Good Shepherd -- films that just didn't appeal to me). But after trying to come around for so long, I have to throw up my hands and conclude that I simply don't "get" Angelina Jolie. For a person who seems to have such a wild personal life, it strucks me as shocking that she should come across as so uninteresting onscreen. And that's the best way to describe her performance here: uninteresting. Her big breakdown scene (after hearing of her husband's death) consists of a long screaming fit that I thought any halfway decent actress could have pulled off just as well. She is surely a fascinating person, but I have yet to be convinced she's anything remotely near special as a performer.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Frankly, I prefered Spider-Man 3 and Ocean's 13 over this (both of which, to my suprise, I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would, especially considering the bad word-of-mouth for the former, considering how much I hated the previous Ocean's movie, and considering what messes both movies are).

I'm a modest fan of Michael Winterbottom, and I've always appreciated his quick-cut editing style which is frenetic yet always in control, with wit and personality appropriate to the film's mileu or characters. But in this film, his worst, he's indistinguishable from the other graduates of the Bruckheimer School of Dramamine (most of whom are also British; what's up with that?)

Sometimes it seems that if a movie has a certain rawness, deglamorization and newsreel realism to it, critics and certain audiences will respond positively to it simply for not looking like a mainstream film. But it IS like a mainstream film, or at least a certain breed of it. It looks just like Ridley Scott could have made this thing, only with natural lighting. "Perfunctory" is the word that comes to mind. Basically, A Might Heart is nothing more than a movie about an ongoing investigation, just a recounting of the events, that's all, little else. And lets face it. Investigation movies are BORING! That is, they're boring unless they movie is about the investigation and nothing else. I'm reminded of another, much better investigation movie from eariler in the year. Zodiac was about the years long investigation of the Zodiac killer, but thematically, there was much more to it. It was also about, among other things, how obsession can take one over during an endless pursuit, and the investigators' obsession neatly paralleled the killers. There is nothing in A Mighty Heart to suggest it's about anything other than the surface story. There is no insight into the characters. They're just functions to the plot. There is no insight into the culture. It's just there for atmosphere. "A Mighty Heart" is about Daniel Pearl's kidnapping, but it really could have been about anyone.

And it's maddeningly opaque in its depction of torture, but that's for another post, one that hopefully won't be written at midnight.

As for Jolie, kudos for not letting herself be photographed as a star. But she has a star quality she's unable to contain. I suppose I don't fault her. I mean, she IS a star. But it sets her apart from the unified style of the rest of the film. Throughout this grim movie, she can't help but light up a room.
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