Preview of Guggenheim’s new film, ‘He Named Me Malala’

But with Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary, “He Named Me Malala”, based on her memoir, “I Am Malala”, you’ll get to know the remarkable girl in a much more intimate and illuminating light.

The “he” in the title is Malala’s father Ziauddin, and their relationship forms the beating heart of a biography that could be entirely didactic. He Named Me Malala is a ringing endorsement of the value of education and freedom of expression, not to mention the threat that those things pose to people who are ruled by prejudice and obsessed with power. And that’s just it: Malala was only 15 at the time of her attack; a young girl whose courage and determination transcends well beyond her years. But “He Named Me Malala” retells that story in a deft and affecting way. She’s shown at home picking on her younger brother, blushing over photos of Roger Federer and Brad Pitt, giggling at Minions. It is as Malala says when accepting her Nobel Peace Prize: “This is not the story of a single girl, but of many girls”. Miraculously, she survived and was transported to England for surgery.

All of this information is in the film, but not in chronological order, and this leads to disjointed moments. But – ironically – director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for “Superman”) gives Malala’s most unkind skeptics just such reason to be dickishly cynical, mythologizing her actions and downplaying what makes her truly commendable: that she remains optimistic, and continues to criticize the Taliban, even knowing they still want her dead.

Her father Ziauddin co-authored her global best-seller, “I Am Malala“, and has said, “We’re one soul in two bodies”.

Seen late in the film, Malala’s fervent, strident public speaking is awe-inspiring, particularly since we are aware by then of the violence that befell her because of it. So the movie asks, ‘Is her life predestined?’ At the end of the movie, Malala ponders the question of whether her father chose her life by naming her after a rebel and by prodding her to speak out on issues of female education. These final scenes, which also incorporate Malala’s memorable address to the United Nations, are heartrending, though Thomas Newman’s score is a bit over-emphatic.

This May 26, 2014 photo provided by courtesy of Fox Searchlight…