
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
June 27, 2007
/ 11 Tamuz, 5767
A Mighty Heart gives a free pass to terror
By
Youssef M. Ibrahim
Film is unlikely to be either a commercial success or a winner of prizes, but one should linger over the harm that it could still do
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
America's movie industry is a potent weapon of global reach that has shaped the world's imagination for generations. In that sense, "A Mighty Heart," the movie that pretends to tell the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002 by Islamic jihadists in Pakistan, ranks as a travesty.
Pearl's story is a real-life yarn of multiple dimensions that, at its most grandiose, could have been spun as the tale of a great clash, a sort of collision between Nazi-like value systems and basic American ones in the story of a working journalist on the chaotic streets of Pakistan.
It could have been treated as the story of a man who grew up believing in something an American raised by liberal Jewish parents to accept everyone's beliefs only to be killed in a far-away land by nihilists who believed in nothing.
It could also have been a sideways profile of the American press which, for all its foibles, has introduced the world to the notions of freedom of expression and democracy.
It is also the story of many Muslim countries, an oft-enacted tale of how failed values pry open a Pandora's box filled with violence and terror.
On its simplest levels, it could have been about suspense, intrigue, and treachery in the dark realms of Islam, the alleyways filled with preachers and terrorists, and how they all intersected when a sword was raised over the neck of a bound, kneeling American reporter.
The movie fails on all these counts and more.
I am not one to believe American movies must be propaganda, for that indeed would doom them. As an avid fan of cinema, like billions of other people around the world, I believe they should simply be good and, in the face of such an obvious evil, be there.
My strongest reservation in "A Mighty Heart" is the absurd political correctness that permeates the film; its writers, producers, and directors do not even mention fanatical Islam to avoid offering offense.
The real story of Daniel Pearl offered a sinister, flavorful, meaty set of scenarios and core values that ought to be examined by the mightiest, most skilled, and best movie industry on Earth. Instead, they fashioned it into an exercise in sterility.
Because it won't touch on the real context of Pearl's deadly adventure, the film turns into merely an acting vehicle for its star, Angelina Jolie, and her producer-companion, Brad Pitt.
This sort of reality, the clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, cannot be reduced to that. Acting for its own sake is hollowness. Even the entirely fictitious "Casablanca," an all-time classic love story, worked within the context of the threat of Nazi fascism and the need to fight against it.
"A Mighty Heart" is unlikely to be either a commercial success or a winner of prizes, but one should linger over the harm that it could still do.
While the movie is gutted by the absence of Pearl, who is airbrushed away to make room for his spouse and eventual widow, most of all, it suffers from pretending to be just another story in just another place. Its settings are not on the moon.
Pakistan is an exporter of terrorism. The government of that country is another Muslim enterprise pretending to be a Western ally, just like Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and many others. That is why Pearl went there and why he was kidnapped and murdered.
If I were a Muslim who had just watched "A Mighty Heart" in a theater in Dearborn, Mich., Karachi, or Cairo, the only impressions that I would probably be left with is that the man got what he deserved and that Karachi is really one hell of a messy place. Beyond that, I would not have a clue that my Muslim compatriots had anything to do with it.
The movie could have saved itself if, at the start, it had shown the killer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who is portrayed in the movie as merely a skilled and handsome plotter boasting, "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan."
Ms. Jolie could have taken it from there.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based in New York City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and a contributing editor of the NY Sun.
© 2007, Youssef M. Ibrahim
|