A political sleight-of-hand

This film tells the true story of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by a jihadist group in Karachi in January 2002. However, it focuses mainly on Pearl's wife, Mariane, who was pregnant at the time of the kidnap, and on the ineffectual search for Pearl carried out by the Pakistani and US intelligence services.

The acting is effective, and Angelina Jolie is very convincing in the role of Mariane. Director Michael Winterbottom does a good job in capturing the tense, chaotic nature of Karachi.

However, the film is ultimately a political sleight-of-hand.

While it justifiably highlights the terrible suffering of Pearl's wife and family, it portrays the various non-US characters in the film as (at best) mere mouthpieces. It was possibly just the DVD I watched, but for long stretches of the film (including some key moments) the dialogue was primarily in Urdu, with no subtitles available. While this may have helped to capture the tension felt by those non-Urdu speakers present as events unfolded, it also created the impression that there is an uncrossable divide between the incomprehensible non-white hordes and the fully human and transparent beings speaking English.

Although bits of the film are convincingly realistic, other bits are almost laughingly unrealistic, such as the portrayal of a US intelligence officer who reassuringly tells Mariane that they'll find Pearl once a few preliminary arrests have been made, because of the methods "they" (the Pakistani secret services) are happy to use. The unspoken implication that "they" but not "us" use or condone torture will fool no-one acquainted with the basic facts about "extraordinary rendition".

In a radio broadcast following her husband's murder, Mariane informs the audience that Pearl is not the only victim of terrorism that month: at least 10 Pakistanis have been murdered by Al Qaeda in the same period. That this is the best the film can do by way of citing other examples of terrorism — at a time when US B-52s were pounding countless innocent Afghani civilians into the dust — reveals clearly the assumption underlying the film: Western governments, unlike the dark-skinned and incomprehensible jihadists, are themselves incapable of terrorist activity.

Although the film is dramatic and compelling, its entirely one-sided portrayal of the "war on terror" won't go unnoticed by anyone with a bare modicum of political nous.

From GLW issue 736