Film review: Miral

Director Julian Schnabel
With Freida Pinto and Hiam Abbass
Released 3 December

Julian Schnabel is one of the world's most successful artists—in commercial terms, at least—so when he began directing films, it wasn't likely that this secondary career would ever turn out anywhere near as well.

Nonetheless, Basquiat and Before Night Falls went on to be critical hits, and his third film, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, was one of the undoubted highlights of 2007: as visually ravishing as you might expect from a leading painter, but also so moving and so expertly constructed that it put any remaining doubts to rest. Schnabel was no mere artist having a crack at directing, but a major film director who just happened to have been an artist.

Three years on, expectations are high for Schnabel's fourth film, Miral. Written by his partner, Rula Jebreal, it opens with the setting up of a Palestinian orphanage in 1947. The film then jumps to 1967, at which point we meet a woman who becomes involved in anti-Israeli terrorism. Then, in another section, we encounter this woman's young daughter, the Miral of the title, who is sent to the orphanage by her father. And eventually we come to 1987, when Miral is a teenager, played by Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto. In other words, the film's heroine, and the actress who is emblazoned on its posters, doesn't actually appear until halfway through the film.

That kind of structure needn't be a problem, per se, but in this instance, as the narrative makes its slow, stilted way from one episode to another, it seems that Schnabel and Jebreal couldn't decide whether to make a film about an orphanage, or about a girl who joins in the same political struggle as her mother, or about anything else that crossed their minds. Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave turn up from time to time, but their cameos are so insignificant that they might as well not be there. And the personalities of the other characters, up to and including Miral herself, aren't established in much more detail.

In his favour, Schnabel has made a well-meaning and impassioned plea for peace, and it's certainly ambitious in its scope and subject matter: once again, he's kept away from the Hollywood mainstream. It's also worth mentioning that Pinto looks stunning, and that the film's piercing colours and experimental camera techniques dazzle.

But after the triumph of The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, that sounds like faint praise indeed. The sad fact is that ambition and camerawork aren't things for which you praise a major director; Miral seems more like a film by an artist who's having a crack at directing.

Nicholas Barber