Here are my impressions of "A Mighty Heart", a film that could have offered important insights into 9/11, but didn't...

“A Mighty Heart” is a fully-funded attempt at creating myths and martyrs, a slick but tiresome propaganda package that quickly loses credibility due to its obvious bias and unrelenting exploitation of tear-jerking flashback memories and heart-rending emotional outbursts from a “vulnerable but tough” Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie), who is also very pregnant. Her stunning good looks were apparently enlisted to shore up the questionable content of the film. Any words that emerge from close-up shots of those voluptuous lips MUST be true, after all. Thankfully, the theater was nearly empty on a Friday night.

The Pearls and those who come to their aid are all flawless individuals who are guided only by exemplary motives and impeccable intentions. In the world portrayed in this film, only the shadowy “terrorists” have motives and maneuvers that are complicated beyond explanation, while the values and virtues of the victims are, without fail, wonderfully simple and touchingly commendable in every detail. It’s a simplistic fairytale set-up, where the lines are clearly drawn between those who are purely good (the "good guys") and those who are purely evil (the "terrorists": sub-human dregs who are ignorant, violent, deluded, wicked, dirty, and they sweat a lot).

The Pakistani investigators are hardworking, upstanding folks who know how to use a little torture once in a while to get results in the service of a just cause. The message is clear: we should learn from them and stop being so namby-pamby. The film’s portrayal of Randall Bennett, an American Diplomatic Security agent posted in Karachi, is supposed to convey him as an earnest and concerned contributor to the rescue effort, but he ends up being nothing more than a “me-too” tag-along, dodging bullets while he pointlessly includes himself in Pakistani sweeps of the usual suspects. His only memorable line is his expression of envy for the Pakistanis’ use of torture. He otherwise has nothing to say of any real significance and spends most of his screen time either on the phone or standing around trying to look serious and sincere, Hollywood style.

Daniel Pearl may have been an honest and idealistic journalist (I don’t know if he was or not), but I would not trust that belief based just upon watching this film. Here, he is presented to us as too perfect, a paragon of virtue, a man of rare ideals, fearless and handsome, always smiling and loving, and he of course would never deny his Jewish identity. He embodies the perfect formula for a martyr-to-be. He is the hapless young idealistic Jew who is only interested in reporting the truth, but has amazingly just learned (after living and working in Pakistan since the build-up to the post-9/11 attack on Afghanistan) that (gosh, gee whiz) if you are going to interview a known “terrorist”, it’s best to do it in a public place. Deep, thoughtful advice, to be sure. And that’s about as deep as the film is willing to go.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Daniel Pearl was “of course” killed mainly because he was Jewish, underscored by a soft-filter flashback to his and Mariane’s Jewish/Buddhist wedding and a weepy scene about how a street in Israel was named after his grandfather. The unspoken subtext (of streets being created that needed naming) subtly reinforces the Zionist propaganda myth of the “land without a people for a people without a land”, while Israel and Israelis, by association through Daniel Pearl (”Mr. Perfect”) and his grandfather, are projected as inherently virtuous in every respect. (Note: my daughter was recently taught in public middle school that Palestine was mostly unoccupied when the Zionists arrived and that the few Palestinians living there left willingly! Who is writing our children’s textbooks?)

Arabs, on the other hand, are portrayed over and over again as anonymous and barely civilized, living in overcrowded squalor and poverty while they consume themselves with chaotic and unflattering activity. And the only way to get decent food in Pakistan is to hire the chef from the American embassy.

The theory is put forward that the stupid terrorists may have killed Pearl because, in addition to being Jewish, they may have believed he was working for the CIA and was using the Wall Street Journal as a cover. Terrorists can be SO paranoid sometimes. The ISI also comes up once or twice during snippets of cryptic, dead-end dialog, but the connections BETWEEN the ISI and the CIA (never mind the Mossad), and the likely reasons — other than Pearl being Jewish or a covert agent — for why someone might have wanted him assassinated are never mentioned.

To the film’s credit, it uses the word “alleged” in its final claim that Pearl was beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “terrorist mastermind” who has confessed to just about everything under the sun except the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, the film also deliberately creates scenes wherein 9/11 “conspiracy theorist” views are presented, but only as a device to discredit them via contrived context and make them seem ridiculous.

The “vast international terrorist network” is the REAL enemy, and don’t you forget it.

http://www.truememes.com/blog1/