“We shot the story in order—so people start not knowing each other and, gradually, they get to know each other—so that hopefully here’ll be a sort of parallel relation [to how it actually happened],” he explained. “Gradually, people will develop the same kind of connections that they do in the real house.”
Mr. Winterbottom is known for shooting his actors almost constantly, following them from room to room, even into their trailers, in order to catch the most “real” moments on film. It was surely an adjustment for Ms. Jolie, who told World Entertainment News Network that she and Mr. Winterbottom had to set limits about where he could and could not film her.
MR. WINTERBOTTOM HAD BEEN GIVEN the book A Mighty Heart by Dede Gardner, Brad Pitt’s partner at Plan B Productions, in 2004. Unlike with other mainstream projects—he’s rumored to have declined Hollywood come-ons for films like The Cider House Rules, Good Will Hunting and Freedomland—he was intrigued.
“I thought it was really powerful …. Having been in Pakistan, I thought Mariane told the story really well. And that was a big plus,” he said. “I thought The Kite Runner was bullshit. But this I thought was a really honest and accurate version of the inside of Pakistan.”
Then Brad Pitt called.
“They said they had a script but they didn’t like the script. And they wanted to get to it straightaway,” Mr. Winterbottom said. “From my point of view it was like, if we were going to work on the script for a year, for two years, and make it at some point, it would be less attractive. We really worked on the script, and filming and casting all at the same time.”
“We went down to Namibia and met with Brad and Angelina …. Basically what Brad was saying was, you know, ‘We want you to do it the way you normally do it.’ So it was a Revolution Films [Winterbottom’s production company] and Plan B production. We could use our own crew, and it was basically made out of Revolution in London. It was kind of like we were given Angelina, [and Brad and Plan B said we’ll give you the money] and you go away and make it. It was kind of perfect.”
The film, so far, has garnered the most attention for Ms. Jolie’s role—with her darker skin, bound-up ringlets and complicated accent (which she pulls off). It’s her return to acting; a chance to deflect attention from her personal life, and back onto her work. It took a director like Mr. Winterbottom to help Ms. Jolie disappear so completely. (Indeed, except for the moments when that wide, signature smile spreads across her face, it’s possible to forget that it’s Angelina Jolie on screen.)
Yet … yet. It’s a Michael Winterbottom picture, from the almost-loving shots of the chaos of Karachi to the lack of exposition. He manages to keep the film fast-moving—in certain scenes it’s almost an action movie—while also conveying the molasses-like pace at which time seemed to move for Ms. Pearl. Someone else could have taken her life and turned it into a sickening-sweet story of overcoming the odds—a Casablanca melodrama where the Nazis kill Bogie straight off and Ingrid Bergman soldiers bravely on. But Mr. Winterbottom simply told it so that we’d have it. And he assumes a tremendous intelligence on behalf of his filmgoers. This is a movie for people who read the news.
Of course, Ms. Jolie is still the main attraction. We rarely see her in a starring role anymore, which hardly matters. Since she’s mostly retreated from the big screen, she’s only become more and more famous. It’s sort of funny, too: Here she is, so unglamorous, fake pregnant belly and frown, on a location that seems more familiar as Jolie-Pitt baby-adoption territory than a film set. One might wonder whether her turn as Mariane Pearl was about her screen work, or her aid work.
“I think if it had been pitched to her like, ‘Oh, this is a great part for you,’ I don’t know that would have made her [as excited],” said Mr. Winterbottom of Ms. Jolie’s motivation to play Mariane Pearl. “But you know, she knew Mariane, she liked Mariane, and I think she agreed with Mariane …. I think that was the deal, not that this was a great acting part …. I think she’s got a lot of passion for the work she does outside acting—maybe she doesn’t have that much passion for acting, I don’t know.”
“I was actually a bit nervous that Angelina was going to get bored,” he noted.
