Miral courted controversy before it was even released. A Jewish filmmaker telling a story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian point of view was bound to be a hot button topic. The film faced protests from Jewish groups during its world premiere at the United Nations' General Assembly Hall. Director Julian Schnabel sent the script to the Israeli Defense Force in order to gain permission to use certain locations. Their response was that helping Schnabel make Miral would be the equivalent of helping Hitler make a movie out of Mein Kampf.
Schnabel began his career as a painter in the New York art scene before making his directorial debut with 1996's Basquiat, based on the life of one of Schnabel's contemporaries, the graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Schnabel's last film was 2007's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a masterful and poetic picture based on the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a journalist who becomes paralyzed and only able to communicate with his left eye. It is a disappointment that Schnabel's follow-up is such a muddled and didactic affair.
Miral is adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal, a journalist of Italian and Palestinian descent who was also Schnabel's girlfriend at the time. The film opens in 1948 in Jerusalem with the founding of the Dar El Tifl orphanage by Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), who opened a shelter for children orphaned by the conflict between Arab and Israeli forces. Husseini accepts donations from philanthropists, but none from any governments for fear of being beholden to them. From there, we meet Nadia (Yasmine Al Massri), a tortured woman who escaped from an abusive home at a young age and has tried to drown her sorrows with alcohol. She is thrown into prison after assaulting a woman on the bus. Her cellmate, Fatima (Ruba Blal) is a former nurse who was arrested for planting a bomb in a crowded theater. In a stylized sequence, Fatima slips the explosives under her seat as the audience remains riveted to a rape scene from Roman Polanski's Repulsion.
Nadia marries Fatima's brother, Jamal (Alexander Siddig), and the two have a daughter named Miral. However, Nadia still carries the emotional scars of a troubled childhood and when tragedy strikes Jamal enrolls a 7-year old Miral in Husseini's institution. Jumping ahead to 1988, a 17-year old Miral (Freida Pinto) is awakened to the violence in the West Bank. Husseini warns students to not get involved lest they endanger everyone at the orphanage. But, Miral falls for the charismatic Hani (Omar Metwally), an activist in the PLO with an eye for an eye mentality.
Schnabel manages to tell the story of Miral in such a disjointed fashion that it drains away any power it might have held. It appears he could not decide whether to tell an intimate character study or a sweeping historic tale. The title character doesn't even appear until 45 minutes into the film. Other characters are introduced and dropped without warning or context. Willem Dafoe appears briefly as an American military officer who fancies Husseini, but that subplot never goes anywhere. Vanessa Redgrave also makes a cameo appearance as wealthy humanitarian Bertha Spafford. Not surprising considering the controversy surrounding her acceptance speech at the 1978 Oscars.
Despite the fractured storytelling, Miral does feature a strong performance from Freida Pinto as the title character. Though of Indian descent, Pinto was picked for her acting chops and her resemblance to Jebreal. But, the best performance in the film belongs to Alexander Siddig, who is probably best known for playing Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Siddig lends the movie a true sense of gravitas as Miral's father.
Miral had all the right ingredients to create a powerful film. It has a strong cast, a topical story, and a filmmaker with a unique vision. However, the pieces just don't fall into place resulting in a disjointed and dull experience.
Rating: ** (*****)
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