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The backdrop to Miral's arrest is the
first intifada; she's in prison in 1987
for suspicion of knowing a PLO activ-
ist (her boyfriend). She's only there for
24 hours, which in turn arouses the
suspicion of her "friends" in the move-
ment. (One of the few things the film
gets right is the way that young revo-
lutionary movements have of turning
inward and destroying their own.)
The film ends on the eve of the
signing of the Oslo agreement.
Adapted by Rula Jebreal (Schnabel's
romantic as well as professional part-
ner) from her highly autobiographical
novel, it tells in laborious chronology
the story of the Dar Al-Tifel Institute,
a home and school for Palestinian
children; its founder Hind Husseini
(Hiam Abbas, who is wasted in a part
that seems to have been designed for
Greer Garson); and the family history
of one of her students, Miral (Freida
Pinto).
Schnabel and Jebreal obviously felt
it imperative to leave out nothing from
Jebreal's novel, with the result that the
film is nearly 45 minutes old before
we even meet Miral herself.
There is an entire series of relation-
ships involving Husseini, an American
colonel (an amiable Willem Dafoe),
the local Arab leadership and a young
imam who will eventually be Miral's
father.
If the purpose of this lengthy
prelude is to establish the school's
centrality to Husseini's vision of edu-
cation as the road to Palestinian self-
determination, the entire matter could
be better dealt with in minutes; as
depicted here, this ideal is barely paid
lip service, and most of the action is
irrelevant.
The film is overstuffed with elabo-
rate plot and thematic elements. We
are treated to the story of Miral's
mother Nadia (Yasmine Al Massri),
who is sexually abused as an ado-
lescent and ends up as an alcoholic;
Nadia's jailhouse encounter with
Fatima (Ruba Bial), a nurse who is
in prison for a failed terror bombing;
and finally Fatima's brother Jamal
(Alexander Siddig), whom Miral will
marry.
There are hints dropped about
Miral's possible parentage that finally
result in an ostensible surprise, but
that revelation comes so late in the
film that there is no time left to pur-
sue it. It remains just one more loose
end among many.
Julian Schnabel's films thus far
have focused intensely on men under
extreme duress and how they respond

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Director Julian Schnabel

with dignity to the pressures of
heroin addiction and sudden celeb-
rity (Basquiat), political and sexual
oppression (Before Night Falls) and
severe physical disability (The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly).
His female characters have seemed
almost an afterthought before now,
and by splitting the narrative focus
between Hind Husseini, Nadia and
Miral, he undermines the audience's
identification with and understanding
of all three women.
That problem is intensified by his
visually scattershot approach, with
shifts in point of view that are incon-
gruent with the conventionally linear
narrative. Many of Nadia's scenes are
shot in a hazy, penumbral style, with
the edges of the frame rapidly shifting
in and out of focus.
The supposed purpose of this par-
ticular stylization is that this is the
way that Miral remembers her mother
who died when she was a child, but
the scenes take place before Miral is
born, and the only way that a viewer
could possibly figure out this ham-
handed symbolism is by reading the
press notes to the film.
Moreover, Schnabel is wildly incon-
sistent in his use of this device any-
way, making nonsense of the conceit.
The wildly swinging camera move-
ments that encircle Hind Husseini
throughout the film's first sequences
make even less sense.
Schnabel's overly emphatic directo-
rial choices repeatedly frustrate and
attenuate his authorial intentions.
Miral may be well intended, but the
result is a 10-ton souffle. L I

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March 31 . 2011

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