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A gritty docudrama

Matthew Heineman’s biopic A Private War is an intense portrayal of a woman reporter uncovering the truth of war atrocities in various conflict zones

A gritty docudrama

On field: The scenes in the film are intercut by showing one moment of Marie being in an area of conflict, then back home at a party or recovering at a hospital.



Navnee Likhi

American documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman’s debut film A Private War is based on the true story of celebrated American foreign affairs journalist Marie Colvin, who worked for British newspaper Sunday Times. The screenplay of the film, which has been written by Arash Amal, has been adapted from Marie Brenner’s article Marie Colvin’s Private War, which was published in Vanity Fair. 

Marie Colvin had reported some remarkable frontline episodes from conflict zones of countries like Sri Lanka, Iraq, Libya and Syria. She was accompanied by her long-time friend, a freelance photographer Paul Conroy. Dodging gunfire, Marie goes into these war zones. Marie also covered the conflict zones in Chechnya and Zimbabwe. Back home, she dines with the elite of London. 

Marie is a complex person, who wants to see things for herself, even at the cost of risking her life. She sees her work as a mission to bring about awareness in the world that the victims of war should not only be mourned but also cared for. She suffers acute psychological trauma too as a result of her reporting in such zones. Her resilience and talent for breaking stories earns her top honours in journalism. She chases more such assignments, despite being repeatedly warned by her publisher that she was putting her life to risk. She even suffers from nightmares from horrors of wars and becomes reckless. 

The movie opens with a voiceover of Marie Colvin being interviewed about her work amid the ruins of the city of Homs in Syria in 2012 where she reported a large number of civilians caught in the middle of the Syrian Civil War. 

The narrative of the story unfolds with flashbacks of Marie’s career as a war correspondent in 2001. She takes up an assignment to cover Sri Lanka’s humanitarian crisis, even though her editor Sean Ryan doesn’t allow her to go there as journalists were banned to cover the crisis involving civilians. Colvin walks through jungles to make her way to the war-torn region of Sri Lanka to interview the elusive leader of Tamil Tigers.

Marie yells, “Journalist”: A few minutes later, an explosion knocks her down on the ground and she is severely wounded. Her left eye is hit by a rocket propelled grenade, which causes permanent loss of sight in her left eye. She covers it with a distinctive black-coloured eye patch. During her hospitalisation in New York, Marie writes a 3,000-word account of the conflict, humanitarian crisis and her injury. On her return from New York, she manages to convince her editor to permit her to return to her job. Marie is a not a run-of-the mill kind of reporter looking for a broadcast but goes close enough to action to make it real. The film doesn’t linger on sentimentality. Neither is it a manipulative drama.

Thereafter, Marie leaves for Iraq as she receives a lead about mass graveyard outside Baghdad. As she lands in Iraq, she meets freelance photographer Paul Conroy based in US military staging area. She takes him along and a translator and sneaks into city of Fallujah to find the site. She bluffs a military check post and reaches the mass graveyard of hundreds of Iraqis, who were victims of Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein. She convinces a local construction crew to dig up the graves. She asks local people to mourn the dead.

The scenes in the film are intercut by showing one moment of Marie being in an area of conflict, then back home, at a party or recovering at a hospital. She is in a constant state of restlessness. To overcome the horrors of war, Marie takes refuge in alcohol, smoking and partying. Some scenes of her drinking and relationships have been overplayed in the film.

Soon Marie leaves for Libya to cover the chaos of Arab Spring uprising in 2011. She interviews Gaddafi at his luxurious palace compound while his country disintegrates around him. Later she issues a dispatch reporting his death saying, “Gaddafi called his enemies rats, yet he was cornered in a sewer pipe. His cruel dictatorship ending in death.” While covering the Syrian war in city of Homs, Marie ignores military warning to leave the area. She stays back to give first-hand account of the shelling and sniper attacks on civilian buildings. Colvin’s assignment in Homs city was her last as she was killed in an explosion, along with French photographer Remi Ochlik.

The cinematography by Robert Richardson recreates the scenes of death and mass-scale destruction. The background song sung by Annie Lennox honours Marie Colvin. A Private War does not show Marie Colvin as a martyr. She didn’t hesitate in going to war-torn countries to offer her services. Rosamund Pike gives a gripping performance as Marie Colvin. 

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