ROSAMUND PIKE GIVES PERFORMANCE OF CAREER
Posted December 3rd, 2018 at 12:56 amNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
WAR CORRESPONDENT PORTRAYED AS TOUGH ECCENTRIC HERO IN SEARCH OF TRUTH
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
A Private War (2018) tells the heroic story of one person’s fanatical search for the truth.
Director Matthew Heineman moves from documentary filmmaking to the dramatization of the biopic life of Sunday Times of London foreign correspondent Marie Colvin.
Colvin reported on the Arab Spring and the wars in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq from 1986 until her death in the field reporting on the Syrian civil war in Homs in 2012.
Heineman films with realism the real life story of a woman who had seen first hand so much brutality that she develops post traumatic stress syndrome.
A PRIVATE WAR (2018)
The dramatic scenes shift from a narrative about her foreign correspondence career to her personal struggle, then shifts again to the internal conflict of the disease and then back to the frontlines of the wars.
Heineman first gradually develops the personality of the Colvin character and thereby bonds the audience with the story before revealing dream like sequences into the mind of a battle weary hero.
The cast includes Jamie Dornan as war photographer Paul Conroy, Tom Hallander as Sunday Times of London foreign editor Sean Ryan, and Stanley Tucci as the love interest.
Hallander has become a well know character actor appearing in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise films (2006), Valkyrie (2008) Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation (2015) and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).
The character acting of Tucci has appeared in supporting roles for the likes of Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Jeremy Irons and Michael Keaton.
Heineman seamlessly transitions from scenes of the actors in supporting roles to scenes of the main narrative involving the leading role played by Rosamund Pike.
This use of a double narrative involving various subplots of the supporting characters creates a compelling narrative without the pop of an action adventure to attract audience to the story.
Pike’s feature film career began at the age of 23 as the ice queen in the James Bond Franchise film, Die Another Day (2002), starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and Halle Berry as special agent Jinx Johnson.
Pike transforms her personality to realistically assume the character of Colvin. Pike sheds all her previous acting roles and becomes Colvin in her professional career, in her personal life and in her battle with post traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.
Pike shows how Colvin madly traveled back and forth from London to the war zone until becoming fanatical about her search for the truth.
Colvin, as are other war correspondence, is portrayed as a special character, often with eccentric habits and a gung ho lifestyle. Colvin could not have been a homemaker.
Pike provides her greatest acting performance to date for the role.
Heineman accentuates the acting of Pike with clever camera direction that also compels the narrative, including the use of light and dark to create artful scenes of mystery and intrigue.
Camera movement also creates sensations to further develop the gonzo fearlessness of the foreign war press.
Heineman uses varied scenes to maintain interest when the acting of the leading character is not directly on film, while all along gradually unravelling the life story of Colvin.
The script does have some time jumping issues which seem out of place because most of the film transitions seamlessly from narrative to narrative and scene to scene.
The script is well written though, with thoughtful dialogue explaining the fearless deeply personal struggle of one of the world’s most respected foreign correspondents.
Charlie Theron received producer credits for the biopic film that runs 110 minutes.