Photo by Peter Mountain
Making A
Difference
Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl and Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart
"The idea was that if we're going to make
a film about an honest journalist, a journal-
ist with integrity — two honest journal-
ists because Mariane is the same — we've
got to try and work in the same spirit','
Winterbottom says."It's not aboutAlo you
like this' or 'don't you like this' or 'do you
agree with this' That shouldn't be — as a
journalist — what you're doing."
That's not a standard to which narrative
films typically adhere. But it was a priority
for Pitt and Jolie, who acquired the rights
from Mariane and included her in the devel-
opment process.
Together they arrived at the choice of
Winterbottom, based on his recent jittery
docudramas In This World, about two
Afghan refugees making the ardu-
ous journey to London, and The Road to
Guantanamo, which re-created the night-
mare of three British nationals caught up in
a U.S. sweep in Pakistan after 9-11.
In a black shirt and close-cropped, gray-
ing hair, new blue jeans and black sneakers,
the rapid-talking Winterbottom makes clear
his dedication to known facts and firsthand
accounts.
arlier this month, at a Los
Angeles preview for A Mighty
Heart, which tracks the
murder of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl by Islamic extremists, the
audience got a bonus when the film's
stars, Angelina Jolie (Mariane Pearl)
and Dan Futterman (Daniel Pearl),
dropped in unannounced.
The film is based on the book of the
same title by Pearl's widow, Mariane
Pearl (with Sarah Crichton), and told
from her perspective. Jolie told the
audience at the Museum of Tolerance
that throughout the filming, she was
constantly aware of the Pearl family's
"unimaginable suffering."
"I hope we have done right by you,"
she told the reporter's parents, Dr.
Judea and Ruth Pearl.
The preview raised $15,000 for the
Daniel Pearl Foundation, established
by his parents to promote understand-
ing between different cultures and
religions. The event was also spon-
sored by Artists for Amnesty.
Speaking of his 5-year-old grand-
son, Adam, born a few months after
his father's slaying, Judea Pearl urged
the boy to keep his faith in humanity,
despite all obstacles.
Ruth Pearl hoped that her son will
be remembered for the way he lived
and worked, rather than the way he
Just Gimme on page 43
Difference on page 43
Just Gimme Some Truth
Mighty Heart director pays homage to the Pearls — and the facts — in new film.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
I
n the fall of 2001, Wall Street Journal
Asia bureau chief Daniel (Danny) Pearl
wrote an article describing the belief in
Pakistan that 9-11 was a CIA-Mossad-Jewish
plot and that all the Jews got out of the
World Trade Center in New York. The Journal
scotched the story, according to A Mighty
Heart, Mariane Pearl's 2003 memoir, co-writ-
ten with Sarah Crichton, of the infamous
kidnapping and murder of her husband
Danny in Pakistan in early 2002.
This anecdote isn't in the powerhouse film
of the same name, which opens in area the-
aters on Friday, June 22, but it was central to
director Michael Winterbottom's approach.
A Mighty Heart, co-produced by Brad Pitt,
stars his significant other, Angelina Jolie, as
Mariane Pearl and Jewish actor-screenwriter
Dan Futterman as Danny Pearl.
The original screenplay didn't contain
many references to Pearl's Jewishness,
Winterbottom confides. That was a mis-
judgment, in his view, that he set about
correcting.
"It seemed to me important that Danny,
as a Jewish person, was very aware of this
kind of prejudice; he was very aware of this
conspiracy theory' the British filmmaker
explaied over espresso on the terrace of the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. "His last
words are about being Jewish and about his
Jewish heritage. Mariane says in the book
that Danny would never deny his being
Jewish, even though he knew that people in
Pakistan might be hostile to Jewish people."
The film raises the possibility that
Pearl was taken and killed because he was
Jewish, but it doesn't assert it with certainty.
However, the movie misses no opportunity
to remind audiences that the journalist was
indeed Jewish.
"It seems to me the [Jewish references] are
all significant things, a part of the context for
what happened to Danny, part of who Danny
was;' Winterbottom says. "But for me, none
of those things are why he was kidnapped. I
don't think I've heard anyone suggest in any
convincing way that there was a targeting of
Danny. Unfortunately, he was in the wrong
place at the wrong time!'
The film is based on Mariane's book, but
Winterbottom also spoke with everyone
who was involved in the search for Danny
between his kidnapping in Pakistan in
January 2002 and his murder a month later.
June 21 * 2007
39