Cannes. A Mighty Heart.

Premiere's Glenn Kenny recognizes that the greatest challenge Michael Winterbottom faces with A Mighty Heart (screening Out of Competition; site) is to get the audience watching the story of Mariane Pearl rather than watching Angelina Jolie - and he goes into some detail as to how Winterbottom's pulled it off. In short, "Jolie and [co-producer Brad] Pitt were very smart to get a director who doesn't do star turns to do Jolie's star turn. I dare say she's got at least an Oscar nomination locked." As for the film itself, it's "involving and moving in the mode of another war-zone Winterbottom picture, Welcome to Sarajevo."

Stuart Kemp talks with Winterbottom for the Hollywood Reporter.

Updated through 5/26.

Screenwriting credit goes to John Orloff. "Which just goes to show, you can't always believe everything you read." Anne Thompson explains.

Stephen Robb gets some press conference quotes for the BBC; so, too, does Erica Abeel for Filmmaker.

Time Out's Chris Tilly has word on Winterbottom's next project. It's going to take him five years to make.

Updates: "In his first studio venture, Michael Winterbottom coaxes forth a staggering wealth of detail from this terse, methodical account of Pearl's kidnapping and murder in Pakistan, seen through the eyes of those who sought his return," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "Winterbottom, who previously ventured into Mideast politics with In This World and The Road to Guantanamo proves to be just the man for the task. Though the prolific British chameleon isn't one to make the same film twice, his gifts for docudrama storytelling - an ability to shepherd complicated narratives, avoiding every opportunity for sensationalism in favor of a low-key mounting dread - couldn't be better suited to the material."

"With the BBC's Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston now missing and believed kidnapped for 70 days and journalists in danger in hotspots around the world, a film version of Mariane Pearl's book about the search for her husband could not be more timely," Ray Bennett reminds us in the Hollywood Reporter.

"There are viewers - American and otherwise, right wing and otherwise - who will really hate A Mighty Heart for its perceived politics," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Without remotely excusing the heinous crime committed by Daniel Pearl's kidnappers, Winterbottom and Orloff place it in context, specifically the shadowy context of Pakistan in 2002. In this telling, American diplomats watched as Pakistani security forces used, um, 'harsh tactics' on people swept up in the Pearl investigation, some of whom were involved and some weren't..... As Mariane Pearl herself told a CNN interviewer after her husband's death, 10 other people had been murdered by terrorists in Pakistan during the same month (and none of them were foreigners). Every personal tragedy that captures our attention is a subset of a larger, more communal or global tragedy."

"This is essentially a police procedural, an accretion of small, agonizing details, rather like the recent Zodiac," write Richard and Mary Corliss for Time. "And since anyone interested in seeing A Mighty Heart is likely to know the awful outcome, the film also has an inherent lack of drama, despite Jolie's commitment to the project and her occasionally volcanic histrionics.... The true impact of the film is outside it.... We film critics call ourselves journalists, though we can't be killed for it; the only danger in our line of work is getting bored or disappointed as we watch a movie. But we can respond to the palpable threat to our better, braver colleagues - those determined to bring the most important stories to their readers and viewers. Their gift is precious; the price they pay for it may be their lives."

Updates, 5/22: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "Compared to In This World or The Road to Guantánamo, this story of Mariane Pearl is strangely underpowered, telling us at great length things that we know already. I wondered if the director's heart was entirely in it."

"One particularly dramatic moment during Monday's press conference came when journalist Chris Burns stood up and said he was depicted in the film," notes Brian Brooks at indieWIRE. "Following the murder of Daniel, Mariane did an interview giving her thoughts on her husband and to assure skeptics in Pakistan that she and her husband were not CIA spies as the kidnappers had alleged. The journalist had crossed the line of sensation during the interview asking, 'have you seen the footage of your husband's death?' The same journalist stood and introduced himself and apologized to Mariane. 'I forgive you,' she said to light applause."

Kenneth Turan talks with Jolie for the Los Angeles Times.

Time Out's Dave Calhoun: "As an American co-production, A Mighty Heart feels like a bigger affair than [In This World and Road to Guantanamo] and as a result it lacks some of their sense of improvisation and close connection to the grit of the real world but gains a wider, international canvas of political intrigue."

Updates, 5/23: "While Angelina Jolie's Mariane Pearl occasionally loses her French accent, she makes up for the misstep with a sturdy, anguished performance that eventually succumbs to a volcanic eruption of grief," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "If the portrayal is already generating Oscar talk, it's also better than such fatuous plaudits."

Winterbottom has turned "a true story into a compelling, intellectually and emotionally engaging film that may take him from the art house to the mainstream," writes Cinematical's James Rocchi.

Update, 5/26: "That Jolie can act as well as pout is finally proved by this French-accented turn, moving and modulated, as the woman whose husband became roadkill on the roadmap to a never-never Middle East peace process," writes Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times. "The pace is tingling, the sense of authenticity thrilling.... The film opts to depict a single, simple, shocking tragedy. It does so with force and skill, helped by Jolie's impassioned heroine."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 21, 2007 6:36 AM