A Mighty Part

I saw that film about the death of Daniel Pearl, A Mighty Heart last night, and it was a mighty disappointment.

It should make such a good real life thriller.  Daniel Pearl is kidnapped by Al Qaeda types and a variety of bodies - American political representatives and investigators, Pakistani ditto, Islamist sympathisers, journalists - are involved in his discovery.  He is ultimately executed.  There should have been suspense, fear, then horror.  What we got instead was Angelina Jolie.

In films you may have to play moral stature by using physical presence since films work on appearance but Angelina Jolie's striking beauty was  overwhelming.  She is so magnificent that just as on her the simple clothes she wears seem like ceremonial robes, everyone else in the action became whirling fragments around her grandeur. She looked like St Pauls in the blitz.   So as we cut - and God, did we cut, from interrogation cell to meeting to press conference - she was always there, and no-one else's presence could stand up to her.  Her kidnapped husband disappeared filmically as well as actually.  The camera worshipped her, the film worshipped her, and all of the great matters - radical Islamism, American foreign policy, the power of the media - became acolytes at her shrine.