"Miral" is as much propaganda statement as it is movie, and its focus on the dysfunctional relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is bound to create considerable controversy. The story of four Palestinian women over more than 60 years tends toward soap opera, and the viewpoint of director Julian Schnabel is strongly sympathetic to them, and harshly critical of the treatment they and generations of their descendants have received from Israelis.
To me, a non-Zionist and non-observant Jew, the film is extremely one-sided, though I know that each participant in this struggle has inflicted awful pain and suffering on the other. But the movie, with screenplay based on an autobiographical novel, both by Rula Jehreal, a Palestinian, loses some of its innocence on learning that she and Schnabel, a Jew, are in a romantic relationship.
We begin, in the days before the founding of Israel in 1948, with Hind Husseini (Hian Abbass), whose boarding school literally saved the lives of hundreds of children. Abbass, so strong with Ben Kingsley a few years ago in "The Visitor," is a wonderful actress, but her role calls for her to do little but be saintly, and her brief, sterile relationship with an American Army officer (Willem Dafoe) adds neither drama nor meaning
Freida Pinto, from "Slumdog Millionaire," is the title character, but we don't get to her for a while. After Husseini, we meet Yasmine al Massri as Nadia, Miral's mother, who is sent to prison, where she comes in contact with our next subject, Ruba Blal as Fatima, a terrorist.
This whole experience is a shame, given Schnabel's powerful earlier films like "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," and "Before Night Falls," both of which were exceptional motion pictures. Schnabel reaches similar tension, and displays his fine touch as a filmmaker, in scenes between Pinto and Stella Schnabel, the director's daughter. She plays an Israeli Jew who is dating one of Pinto's cousins, and sparks fly.
Another problem with "Miral," and probably its largest, is that Schnabel ends it in the warm glow of the Oslo accords of 1993, when the world thought we had turned the corner toward peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Oh, how wrong we were.
Miral opens today at the Plaza Frontenac.
—Joe