Straight from the heart

Daniel Pearl’s abduction and beheading was an act of stunning brutality.  Pearl was the bureau chief of south Asia for the Wall Street Journal. In the early months after 9/11,  he was in Pakistan with his pregnant wife Mariane,  researching a story on Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaida. One night he went to meet a source and didn’t return.

Pearl’s disappearance made headlines around the world.  His newspaper learned he was being held by a group that claimed he was a CIA agent, targeted because he was Jewish. His wife Mariane went on television to appeal for his safe return.

Four weeks after Pearl was kidnapped, a grisly videotape surfaced.  And it left no doubt how he died.

Daniel Pearl was the first prominent Western journalist to die covering the war on terror. Brad Pitt, watching the story unfold on television, was deeply moved.

Brad Pitt: I myself remember vividly sitting at the kitchen table and being riveted by this journalist who had been taken. I don’t know if it’s because of his spirit of what was there behind it at that time.  But the interview of his wife, of course, Mariane.  Because she came out with such strength.

So when Mariane wrote a memoir of the experience, Brad optioned it.  That was long before he and Angelina were an item.

But oddly enough, about the same time, Mariane was reaching out to Angelina, at that point a single mom like herself. 

Angelina Jolie: All kind of came at the same time.  We all had a play date like three years before and we kind of kept sending word back and forth.  But we both hated phones.  And we both take a really long time to respond to the other.  And we never got in the same place at the same time.

Curry: But there’s something about the two of you that sort of felt like you intersected.

Jolie: Yes.

They became friends. After Angelina and Brad became a couple, they decided to move ahead with the project. The couple recruited director Michael Winterbottom, known for his documentary style.  He also had a connection to the story.

Michael Winterbottom, director: In fact I was in Pakistan when the news of his death came out.  So being there, again, you kind of more aware of the story—felt more of a connection to the story.

For Angelina, playing the role of Mariane was complicated.

Jolie: How do you play [it]? It’s like somebody said to you, “You know, your great girlfriend has gone through the most horrible thing in her life.  Why don’t you stand up and show us what she went through and how it felt?” You can’t.  You know?  And it was hard.  It was really hard.  But she was great and she did just kind of disappear and say, “Just do it it how you feel.”

Curry: Did she kind of know that, “Hey, if I hang around, it’s gonna be hard”—

Jolie: I think she did...but I also think she genuinely doesn’t care about film.

Curry: No, she trusted you.

Jolie: I think she did trust me.

Winterbottom put the actors together in a house in India  for hours at a time,  and started the cameras.

Winterbottom: We kind of hope that by filming in that house over five weeks, that gradually the actors would fall into relationships that were similar in a sense to the relationships the real characters had fallen into.

Angelina found herself improvising like she had never done before.

Jolie: Yeah.  When I was emotional towards the end, he’d say, “If you don’t want me to follow you in, close the door.  But if it’s okay, just leave the door [open].” 

Curry: Because it got too heavy.

Jolie: It got real heavy.  Or it just—something would happen where it would just be like, “Yeah, I”—yeah, something.  You just couldn’t handle certain elements of it. But it was the only way we could close doors on Michael, but we couldn’t get out of the house.

Actor Dan Futterman played Daniel Pearl and was working with Angelina for the first time.

Dan Futterman, co-actor: She has that touch that some actors have that. You know how much preparation has gone into it. But in the work, it seems absolutely like the easiest thing in the world.  She’s doing this accent that’s not her own.  She was dressed in a way that’s not her, and a prosthetic belly.  And she’s improvising.  And it is the easiest—it seems, in working with her, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

And some people have that, and many actors, like myself, don’t.  But I admire it enormously. There’s this feeling of being in the scene with her and also a slight bit of me being out of it, thinking, “You are so very good.” 

The movie is a love story.

Futterman: I made an effort to sort of capture, as much as possible, with Angie, the humanity, the relationship, the ridiculous silly moments—in addition to the deeper connections that they had.

Curry: It mattered a lot that you were able to capture this intense relationship, this love that Mariane and Danny had for each other.

Futterman: It mattered a lot to me.  I know it mattered to Angie, and it certainly mattered to Mariane.  And you know, to Michael, and there’s very little time to do it.  And so, you know, we shot a great deal of material, and Michael chose the little moments that would be—that would speak most to that.

Curry: You do feel her love for him.

Jolie: Oh, I hope so.

Curry: You worked really hard at this to create that, because that was important to you.

Jolie: Yes. We’d read things about them, we’d see things about them, we’d talk to people about them.  We almost said that the problem of that, they’re just perfect. (LAUGHTER) To just learn about that as well, as somebody in a relationship… just to think, “Wow, this is amazing.”  They have something that so many of us would love to have had.

The movie is also a drama—Mariane, Pearl’s colleagues, Pakistani investigators and American diplomats join forces, devoting days and nights to finding him alive. That was another reason Brad was drawn to the story of Pearl's abduction. Brad believes the international search team was itself a kind of victory over the terrorists.

Pitt: These guys tried to take out and destroy this man. It actually backfired in in a very interesting way.  It actually brought people together.  And the people in the house who were in search of Danny were Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jewish. And it actually became this—a catalyst to bring people together. 

Jolie: There is also this amazing friendship with a Pakistani Muslim man who is a captain.  And he cares so much, so dedicated, and so broken hearted that this would happen. He is of that faith, and it’s that faith that makes him want to bring somebody’s husband and father home.

Curry: So you’re saying it’s more complicated.  This movie understands that this is not Muslims against Christians.  It’s not about that.  It’s the complications are that there are similarities no matter what faith, what country you’re from.

Jolie: And there’s something beautiful in a film that you would think is about this difference of faith is actually very much focused on the people from Buddhism to Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, all in the same house, becoming great friends and becoming each other’s greatest support.

During the filming the actors also drew closer together inside the house.  And then, for Angelina, the biggest test of all—to convey the real anguish of the night when Mariane discovered her husband was never coming home.

Curry: She goes into her room, your character goes into her room, and this just primal scream comes.  I mean, hard.  Hard. Hard.  Real.  Real scream of just agony over the loss of her husband. This must have been a very difficult scene to do.  Very difficult.

Jolie: It was. On that night, there was no plans for how to respond to that.  I had no thought in my head of how I was gonna respond to that ‘cause I couldn’t imagine it.  But we all just I think allowed ourselves to feel and try to let that come through. And everybody had tears in their eyes.  And it was not for the camera.  It was not in any kind of acting moment.  It was the thought that we all shared on that night of, “My god, how horrible this must have truly been.”  I can never understand.  I tried to recreate and I tried to act, but I can never understand what a woman goes through when that that happens, and I have such sympathy for them.

Curry: To see him in your child and not have him—

Jolie: --yet the probably the thing that helped her carry on because thank God she was pregnant.  Thank God she had that piece and has that piece of Danny every single day of her life now.

Curry: And he lives on.

Jolie: Yeah.  So thank God for that.  But at the same time, of course, what a great loss.

Curry: This movie then is somewhat personal.  It’s not just another movie.

Jolie: Oh yeah. And I think for everybody.  And I think most people, people around the world, remember such brutality… and yet such strength in her.  And they have a beautiful little boy now who’s the perfect combination of the two of them.  And it’s this shining example of, and is everything they represent and believe in. And he’s her victory.

Jolie: I’d gotten to know their son. And the thought that he would see this one day and that it was my responsibility to not just show the world but also show him how much his mother loved his father and how much they loved each other and how they handled this time—was something that haunted me through the whole thing and haunted, I think, everybody involved.

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