Miral
Freida Pinto, Hiam Abbass, Alexander Siddig
Director: Julian Schnabel
Just like his previous, much-acclaimed film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel's new film is also an adaptation. But that's where the similarities end: unlike that wonderful 2007 film, Miral is a disjointed enterprise, with the director seemingly unable to decide how to handle an epic story which spans four decades in a Palestine wrought by war, suppression and internal schisms.
Based on the autobiographical novel of journalist Rula Jebreal, the film should have been about a young Palestinian woman's challenges growing up as a marginalised individual in a country which denies her roots and rights - a problem heightened when she falls in love with an activist deemed a terrorist by the Israeli state machine.
Perhaps anxious to provide the whole context of Miral's tribulations, Schnabel decides to tell her story from way before her testing times.
The film actually begins not with the titular character but with Hind al-Husseini (Hiam Abbass), an affluent woman who opens an orphanage for the Arab children she finds on the streets after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. It then switches to Nadia (Yasmine al Massri), Miral's mother who is saved from doom through a loveless marriage with an imam (Alexander Siddig).
By the time the adult Miral (Freida Pinto) emerges from Husseini's institution with her own set of problems, the narrative has already become far too muddled to draw comprehension and empathy from the viewer.
