Mighty Heart and Namesake

We finally saw A Mighty Heart last night. Powerful, well-done. R-rated but mainly for the tension and explosive use of the f-word. Particularly by Angelina. I thought she played the part very well. All the controversy about her being "white" and having to darken her skin to pay a real-life woman who is bi-racial may have its point but then how do we find the exact match in any film? Brad Pitt was one of the producers which may have made a difference in casting.

We all know the outcome of the story and it isn't shown. The emphasis seemed to be on Jolie's role as Marianne Pearl. I remember reading that the two worked together on the film. The special features are worth seeing. Good background into the movie. I did read some criticism of the movie that it didn't show the radical Muslims radical enough. It did show what I thought was an amazing amount of cooperation from the Pakistani police in investigating the kidnapping, after a period of non-cooperation. In the follow-up features the Pearls make the point that we have to keep an open dialogue. Maybe that was the purpose in downplaying the radical in favor of showing the positive. Or I could just be terribly naive.

The man who plays the Pakistani captain (and is listed as Captain in the credits) is Irfan Kahn who played the father in a beautiful Indian movie called Namesake. We saw it in the theaters last year and it just came out in video. I almost enjoyed watching him in the Mighty Heart more than Angelina since he played such a loving character in Namesake. It was good to see him again and in another good role.

Namesake is about a newly-wed Indian couple who move from India to New York and have a child. Their son grows up and the movie gives us his story and his parents and some insight into Indian culture. We loved it. Female director and the actress who plays the mother is named Tabu.


Just as a side point, the end of the Daniel Pearl tragedy takes place around the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha which, this year, is next Thursday. I know because I actually looked on our school calendar. This is a milestone for me. Anyway, I have tried to teach something about it in class. Especially since half of my class is Muslim. I just made sure I didn't use any teddy bears to help tell the story.

Eid Al Adha is a commemoration of the sacrifice Abraham had to make. In case you're confused, too, remember in Islam it's Ishmael who gets taken up the mountain and has nightmares the rest of his life about his father and a knife.

Unfortunately, we had our school carnival last week and another teacher and I helped out at the duck pond. We give out cheap trinkets that we get donated and have a huge carbon footprint. We also have a fair-sized Muslim student population. After the carnival, I happened to turn over one of the cheap donated trinkets. In small letters it said, "Jesus loves you."

My last words were, "I am a Jew." "But it's the goyim's fault."