Angelina Jolie issues a scream in "A Mighty Heart" that can only be described as primal, as a howl of deep, unimaginable pain.

	Angelina Jolie with Michael Winterbottom, director of "A Mighty Heart." Click photo for larger image. Related review 'A Mighty Heart'

It, like much of the movie, came straight from the account written by Mariane Pearl, who is played by Jolie.

In her 2003 book, "A Mighty Heart" (written with Sarah Crichton), Pearl wrote: "I cry out. I have never screamed like this before. I can feel that I'm screaming, but the sound that rips up out of me is alien, as if everything is coming out of me. I sound like an animal caught in a bone-crushing trap."

She had learned the fate of her husband, Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

The 38-year-old American had been kidnapped Jan. 23, 2002, in Karachi while working on a story about links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and Richard C. Reid, arrested in December 2001 on a flight from Paris with explosives in his shoes.

Mariane Pearl's wail was a moment that proved unforgettable to those who had joined Pearl in trying to locate and liberate her husband and instead learned he had been murdered.

They described it to director Michael Winterbottom, who used Pearl's book as his guide, along with first-hand accounts of that time. "She had been so strong all the way through, disciplined and working and supporting people, that they hadn't really seen her emotions at all and suddenly there was this kind of outpouring," he said in a recent phone call.

Mariane, a journalist herself then pregnant with the couple's son, along with her husband's colleagues, law enforcement and counterterrorism experts and others had been working hard to save Danny. "It was only then they realized how much she'd been holding in. They realized she was trying to keep it together."

It's a harrowing sequence that moves inside and outside the house, and Winterbottom shot it three or four times. He then required Jolie to scream again -- even more times -- during a delivery scene.

"A Mighty Heart," filmed in Pakistan, India and France during the summer and fall of 2006, took its shape and structure from the widow's book.

Asked if he ever felt in danger, the 46-year-old British director said no but added, "I was in Pakistan when Danny's death was announced. One of the things you realize, it's not as though Danny would have realized he was in danger until the thing happened."

After all, he says, there are no warning lights flashing green or red, and you see Pearl -- a cautious man -- inquiring about the safety of the meetings he's trying to set up.

"Things happen out of the blue," Winterbottom said, so he cannot tell an actor he can guarantee his or her safety. He shot another film in Afghanistan and was warned about how dangerous it was. "The crew flew back from Afghanistan and arrived in London about a half an hour before the bombs went off in London," he says.

A danger or nuisance of another kind came from the paparazzi who hunted Jolie and companion-producer Brad Pitt.

"Angelina was in India for six weeks; the first five weeks were all inside the house," which serves as the heart of the story where the team of seven or eight assembles. "They were getting hassled off set; I wasn't seeing it," although he later witnessed a fleet of photographers trailing the famous couple when they left their hotel in Mumbai.

If moviegoers are somewhat confused by all of the players -- foreign and domestic -- in the story, Winterbottom said that's only natural and right. "At some point, you realize you don't have to understand everything because the whole point is, they don't understand everything."

Pakistan is a confusing, opaque place, he said, and even the knot of telephone wires are a sign of that. "Obviously, you've got a lot of people living in a very unofficial way. All the telephone wires, always loads and loads of lines going off, people tapping into the lines."

While at least 182 journalists and other employees of media organizations have been killed since the start of the Iraq war (launched after Pearl's death), his resonates with the public. "I guess being the first of that type of killing makes you remember it," Winterbottom said.

"But, I think also, it's about Mariane's response to it, Mariane's kind of strength and her sense of refusing to give in to extremism on either side, that you can still have a positive view of the world despite these things happening. In the end, the film is about Mariane."