An Anxious Feeling

By Matthew Holley

[1] This particular scene is the climactic moment in the film that everyone knows is coming but everyone wishes it could be corrected before we get there. Director Michael Winterbottom guides A Mighty Heart in a way that he really wants to build up the viewer’s anxiety as this moment approaches. Prior scenes have depicted Daniel Pearl as a loving and romantic spouse, a charismatic, easygoing guy that gets along with everyone, and a dedicated journalist.

[2] Just prior to the scene John Bussey, Steve Levine, Captain, and Randall Bennett have come across a video supposedly providing evidence of Daniel’s murder. The video is never seen, but the faces of the men leave no doubt that the fears have been realized.

[3] The scene begins with Randall making a call back to Asra and Mariane to let them know that they are returning to the house. Mariane’s anxiety has boiled over and when Randall’s phone call cuts out before she can get any news about what is going on, she decides that she is leaving. As Asra hastily tries to talk some sense into Mariane, the camera angles and shots start to shift quickly. We see shots of the car likely carrying the men back to the house with the bad news, Mariane wincing in pain as she tries to ready her self to go somewhere, and then multiple shots from within the car. The viewer knows the bad news is coming, and it is likely that Mariane has assumed as much, but she is still fighting. Mariane has no idea where she is going to go, but she has to do something. The men in the car wear their pain and disappointment blatantly on their faces. The cars are traveling back through the untouched wild Pakistani cities that emit a constant feeling of danger, and Mariane still shifts around inside of the guarded, safe confines of Asra’s home. As the car arrives, Mariane tentatively moves to the front steps. She is just on the border between the safe home and the ugly world that has just taken her husband from her. Since Daniel was captured there have been no scenes showing her out in the city.

[4] The faces greeting Mariane all look beleaguered and broken, with most of the men looking down at the ground, and the difficult task of telling the news resides with Bussey. “I’m sorry Danny didn’t make it,” he says. The camera angle shifts to an extremely tight shot of the widow’s face, and her eyes grow wide and huge. Her gaze is one of desperation as she shifts her eyes back and forth looking to the other men in shock and hoping that someone could tell her that this isn’t true. Multiple angles are employed as we see Mariane from all angles as she aches with pain in front of everyone. Angelina Jolie’s acting job is magnificent as she peers out at everyone and fights back her need to cry. The intimacy of the scene puts the viewer right into the shoes of the men as they all stand in the driveway, and at one point the camera shifts and pans out far enough to show some of them fidgeting in discomfort.

[5] As Mariane’s ability to hold back her tears diminishes, her lip quivers, and she flees back to her bedroom. She travels back into the safe confines of the home, and even goes deeper as she heads straight back into her room deep within the house. Winterbottom wants the scene to rip the viewer’s heart out as we witness Mariane’s pain.

[6] The walk back to the bedroom is almost silent. When Mariane is within the walls of her dimly lit room, she explodes into a primal scream of anguish. That small walk is a microcosm of the journey of the entire film. The viewer has been aware of the unavoidable death since the beginning, and it’s the pain that is heard now in those screams that really torments the scene. All of the anxiety has been built up to the moment when this poor woman finally learns this terrible truth. Now as she screams over, and over, and over again at the base of the shrine at which she has been seen worshiping, she can no longer hold out with any hope. The crying seems so real, and as Jolie somehow makes herself wail hard enough that she loses her breathe, the camera hangs on her profile for what feels like forever waiting for her to breathe again. When her breath returns she grips her head tightly and almost convulsively cries out in a shaking manner. The camera angles and the viscerally accurate acting job strike deep into the sanity of the viewer, and it is hard not to shudder back in pain.

[7] The view shifts back to the men outside her bedroom door now, heads again down, and there is a feeling of guilt being emitted, a guilt that feels like someone somehow should have been able to find a way to avoid this moment. Nobody speaks, nobody dares to get any closer, but everyone stays waiting. As Bussey paces back and forth, he seems caught off guard when Mariane opens the door. He looks back at the other men for support, and Mariane asks him in an angry tone how is it that he knows Daniel is dead. In a prior scene she receives notification that someone had discovered Daniel’s dead body, but it turns out to be a hoax. The viewer knows there is no relief coming this time, and it just adds to the pain that Bussey might have to provide more details to prove that Daniel has actually passed. As Mariane asks again and again how they know, she seems to be trying to gain a grip back on her positive attitude, and she evens shallowly smiles a few times. As the camera pans from person to person, and as Mariane keeps asking, the viewer hopes that the camera will not shift to them, and nobody could want the responsibility of telling her how Daniel had been murdered. As Mariane’s courage builds, they know it would be cruel for her to receive any false hope, and in pieces a couple of the men tell her of the video. “They had a knife and they used it in a way that leaves no doubt,” one of them says. Confused, Mariane asks them to explain what that means, and Baumen has to tell her that he has been beheaded.

[8] The focus is squarely on the compassion for the suffering wife. While the film is founded on the death of Daniel Pearl, the story that the director is telling is one of heartache and anguish for the woman that his murder has left behind. I had prepared myself for a gritty film that would test my stomach with gory portrayals of a man getting his head sawed off, and had I been told that there was no blood and guts shown in the film but I would still be shaken to the core, I would have doubted it. Every artistic element that Winterbottom uses really sucked me in. I expected to be scared, waiting for the moment when Daniel would die, but by shifting the point of view around to his wife the entire story has changed. I wondered how a movie based on such a widely known true story could ever be suspenseful or entertaining. I thought that A Mighty Heart would be a quasi-documentary with shocking visual scenes. What I ended up getting when I watch the film is a terrible path of anxiety as I wished I could jump on the screen and stop this scene from coming. This scene in particular reminded me of the first time I shot and killed a deer. I had spent months steadying my shot, weeks preparing my clothes, and my Dad had spent years readying me for that manly experience. I knew that I would kill the deer, but I didn’t realize how difficult things would be afterwards. As a few other hunters pushed the opposite side of the woods driving any bedded deer my way, I finally saw a fluffy white tail emerge from a thick patch of forest. I waited until I was sure I could shoot for the kill, and then I pulled the trigger. I climbed down from the stand quickly, and when I approached the deer, I realized that I was alone with the dying animal during its last few breaths. In our way of life, I had done nothing to feel guilty about; without hunting in our area, the deer population would grow too large and threaten the ecosystem. We would eat everything that we could, and the rest would be given to a taxidermist. Still, as I watched the life fade from the doe’s eyes, I wanted to turn back time and give it life again.

[9] I know that it wasn’t me that killed Daniel Pearl, but somehow I felt guilty for watching the entire movie. Winterbottom had made me feel like I was right there in that house with Mariane, and I had known that Daniel would be murdered. I couldn’t do anything to help stop Mariane from becoming a widow, and even thinking about it now that scene stirs up an anxious feeling in my stomach.