Film: A Private War
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci, Tom Hollander, Alexandra Moen, Amanda Drew, Corey Johnson, Fady Elsayed, Faye Marsay, Greg Wise, Gurnita Kaur Kahlon, Hilton McRae, Jeremie Laheurte, Nikki Amuka Bird, Raad Rawi
Director: Matthew Heineman
Rating: * * * *
The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci is numero uno in my list of fave-rave foreign correspondents. Award-winning war correspondent Marie Colvin slips down a notch on account of her one-night stands, substance abuse and avoidance of the socio-political context in the gripping stories she wrote for the Sunday Times from the killing fields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya where she interviewed Gaddafi who would eventually be brutallised and killed, most savagely. In Sri Lanka, she would lose an eye while writing a story on the Tamil Tigers.
Like US Army vets who return time and again to the euphemistically named “tours” of the Muddled East, Colvin feels most alive when she fleeing from bombs and gunfire. And of course, “truth telling” that is, writing about the horrendous suffering of the victims of war. Documentary filmmaker Heinemann shows his self-destructive subject, warts and all even as he underlines her bravery, courage, complexity and her internal jihad. In fleshing out the central character for the screen, scriptwriter Arash Amel relied on a Vanity Fair article.
In her screen avatar, Rosamund Pike puts in an Oscar-worthy performance; the supporting cast is reliable, but it is as her photographer colleague and friend, that Jamie Dornan shows there’s more to him than 50 shades.