Victor Feinman

I just got out of the screening of “A Mighty Heart”, a terrifyingly movie based off of the book “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl” witten by Mariane Pearl.  The plot outline is as follows:

On January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is to fly from Karachi to Dubai with his pregnant wife, Mariane, also a reporter. On the day before, with great care, he has arranged an interview in a café with an Islamic fundamentalist cleric. When Danny doesn’t return, Mariane initiates a search. Pakistani police, American embassy personnel, and the FBI examine witnesses, phone records, e-mails, and hard drives. Who has him? Where is he? There’s also the why: because of U.S. abuse of prisoners at Guantanimo, because of a history of Journal cooperation with the CIA, because Pearl is a Jew? Through it all, Mariane is clearheaded, direct, and determined.

I thought the movie to be incredibly moving. I don’t know what works better, a good true stroy film as such or terrorism. Being so close to the setting of this film worrys me. It made me think of all the suspicious people I have run across since I have been in Mysore. It made me feel as if at any moment I can be taken off the streets and transported to an undisclosed location for turtoring and ultimately death. It was interesting to be able to relate to some of the sceens which took place in Mumbai, India. For example in one of Mariane’s flashbacks of Danny, they were on a boat in Mumbai near the Gateway to India with the Taj Hotel in the background; I recall being in the same location.