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Film: Miral
Year of production: 2010
Release date: 4th April 2011
Studio: Pathe!
Certificate: 15
Running time: 108 mins
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Freida Pinto, Hiam Abbass, Asma Al Shiukhy, Neemeh Khalil, Jamil Khoury
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of production: France/Israel/Italy/India
Language: English
The plight of the Palestinian people and their ongoing struggle for recognition and statehood forms the backdrop of Miral, US artist and director Julian Schnabel’s 2010 biographical drama, but the film is really about the early life and political awakening of its titular subject, Palestinian author and journalist Miral Shahin. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Schnabel’s partner Rula Jebreal, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, Miral has caused a fair degree of controversy for the way it portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is dedicated “to everybody on both sides who believes peace is still possible.”
Where most biopics focus almost exclusively on the lives of the subjects whose stories they seek to tell, Miral is unusual in the way it interweaves stories of people who had a profound impact on the life of its central subject. Miral Shahin (basically a pseudonym for Rula Jebreal) was born in 1973, but the film goes as far back as 1947, just before the formation of the Israeli state, in order to establish context and expose viewers to people who are vital to Miral’s life story.
The film opens in 1994, as two women carefully prepare the body of an old woman for a funeral, praying in Arabic as they do so. As we will later discover, the body is that of Hind Husseini, a Palestinian woman who set up the Dar El Tifl children’s home in 1948. Over the years, the home provided refuge and education to thousands of Palestinian children, one of whom was Miral.
Also central to Miral’s story are Nadia, her deeply troubled mother, and Fatima, a former nurse who helps Nadia when the two women are thrown together in prison. Nadia is imprisoned for six months after assaulting a Jewish woman on a bus, while Fatima received three life sentences for planting a bomb that doesn’t go off in a cinema. After Nadia is released from prison, she gets married to Jamal, Fatima’s brother, and has Miral, but when her daughter is still a young child she kills herself, wracked by guilt over her drinking and adulterous affairs.
After her mother’s death, Miral is taken by her father Jamal to Dar El Tifl, where she is placed in the care of Hind. Jamal is a deeply loving man who continues to visit Miral at weekends, but he is determined that she will not end up like Nadia or Fatima. By 1987, however, the Palestinian uprising is in full flow, and Miral becomes increasingly politicised. Eventually, after being caught with revolutionary literature, she is detained, interrogated and tortured by Israeli authorities. Soon after, in 1993, the Oslo agreement, in which the Israeli government agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state, is signed, and Miral leaves her homeland to study in Italy…
Miral isn’t quite in the same league as The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Schnabel’s powerfully intense 2007 biopic about the French journalist and author Jean-Dominique Bauby, but it’s certainly not the one-sided failure that some critics have described it as. Schnabel’s mother was involved in the Zionist movement in the US, and his girlfriend Jebreal has clearly given him insight into the Palestinian struggle, so he is arguably well placed to understand both sides of the conflict.
Inevitably, perhaps, given the true life story that Miral is based on, it’s a film that will be seen by some as a simplistic account of an ongoing, highly complex conflict. The film makes it clear that the 1993 Oslo agreement is yet to be honoured by the Israelis, and the archival footage used in Miral doesn’t present a favourable view of their occupation of Palestinian territories, but Schnabel also attempts to show that not all Israelis are the coldly indifferent, right-wing zealots they are sometimes painted as.
Towards the end of the film, Miral befriends Lisa, the Jewish girlfriend of her cousin Samir, and it dawns on her that many younger Israelis do not share the older Israeli generation’s contempt for Palestinians. In one pivotal scene, Lisa dismisses her father, an Israeli army officer, by joking that he thinks all Palestinians are terrorists. In another important scene, Schnabel deploys subtle humour to show how Miral’s aunt attempts to make Lisa feel uncomfortable by exaggerating her Arabic identity when Samir brings Lisa home for a meal.
Miral is also full of Schnabel’s trademark visual panache, and he makes highly effective use of close-ups and saturated colours that heighten the atmosphere. Miral does have its flaws, though; some of the performances are a little wooden, and star turns by Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave are unnecessary distractions. Redgrave barely features, but Dafoe pops up a couple of times as Edward Smith, an American man who first meets Hind in 1947 and then reappears in 1967 as a US colonel working for the UN to briefly help Hind, and gaze admiringly at her. There’s no doubting Dafoe’s acting ability, but his character seems tacked on in a slightly cloying attempt to show that Americans are not always the bogeymen in the Middle East.
Miral is unlikely to be remembered as one of Schnabel’s best films, but it’s a brave and heartfelt attempt to tell the story of an inspirational Palestinian woman and the people who had an influence on who she became. JG
Film: The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
Release date: 9th June 2008
Certificate: 12
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais
Genre: Biography/Drama
Studio: Pathe!
Format: DVD
Country: France/USA
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is the true story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who suffered a crippling stroke leaving him entirely paralysed except for the motor functions of his left eye. His mind, the butterfly, is trapped within the body, the diving bell - the film is giving a poetic voice to that butterfly, based on the book he wrote whilst in hospital without being able to physically write himself.
The film is a personal tale of the enduring human spirit in spite of devastating adversity, as it follows the inner monologue of Bauby coming to terms with his physical prison. He is a man who is helpless to speak or react to anyone, which proves extremely difficult for everyone he once knew, including his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), children and mistress.
Bauby’s prison, however, slowly erodes as he learns to speak through the blinking of his left eye, which, utilising the help of the nurse (Marie-Joseé Croze), aids him to write the book that inspired the film. It is entirely gripping, humorous but also deeply emotive, as Bauby’s words that no-one can hear are screaming for a voice…
Despite the prison that Bauby is caged within, the film is as free as his mind, with metaphors and symbolism as explicit as the heartbreaking reality of his situation. Julian Schnabel did a superb and sensitive job in directing Mathieu Amalric, despite Amalric having to learn French for the film, and his eye being the only outlet for his visual talent. His onscreen presence shifts between the self important Elle editor to loving father, and finally to a passionate fragility, as the time frame shifts from past to present.
Visually, the film really excels. Schnabel claims the film is about different ways of seeing, and, by his own admission, used his own glasses over the lens to create the unique point of view of Bauby‘s. Latex was used to simulate the view of an eye being sewn up in a particularly memorable few minutes of the film, but it’s the moments of random eye movement that seemingly sum up the film’s personal feel. The audience is dragged through the iris of Bauby as he makes sense of his all too familiar surroundings again and again, as the film’s seductive focal points add up to a portrait of frustrating incarcerating disability.
Although Bauby is unable to communicate with others, the dialogue of others is as natural and as real as exchanges suited to reality. Some characters struggle to adjust their speech to their now paralysed friend, whilst others struggle talk at all – there is an extremely heart wrenching exchange between house-bound father and paralysed son.
Structurally, the timeline is succinct with Bauby’s own regrets with moments in his life - he cannot seem to let go, as the symbolic injection of Schnabel suggests. The symbolism of Bauby’s sinking body is contrasted by his free roaming imagination, which is packed with lust, love and vast emotional landscapes. The truth of the film really hits hardest at the end, as despite the fact that Amalric is acting; his delicate portrayal of Bauby only shows a glimmer of what a destructive force a stroke is on everyone involved.
It is, however, through the exploration of delicate relationships, with the seemingly lifeless, that strike the loudest chord. Bauby is witty and flirtatious for the audience only, but for the characters onscreen he is a shadow of his former self, despite, within his diving bell, finding a new meaning to life. The captivating and consistent caring nurse highlights that humanity is still within reach. She is hurt by his revelations of wanting to die. The writer (Anne Consigny) is a character that develops through her experience, as she has had no relations with Bauby prior and yet, is ultimately, the closest person to him, after aiding him write his book, who is just as moved as the audience by his poetic revelations.
Other moments highlight the tireless conflict - an awkward exchange between Bauby’s ex-wife and his mistress creates an unbearable tension which is then lifted by the heart-warming attempts of Bauby’s friend (Isaak De Bankole) to read to him. These moments make the film uplifting, yet also devastatingly poignant.
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly supplies that shred of real humanity that many films fail to attain as it explores the vast depths people will go for others. The over-bearing lows are met with the soul searching highs proving this film to be one of the most explorative in terms of disability, and especially of vast change that all people, no matter the circumstances, will experience. AE
This is an English-language release.
Julian Schnabel directs this drama about an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war.
Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) sets up an orphanage following the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 that soon becomes home to almost 2,000 children.
7-year-old Miral (Freida Pinto) ends up in the orphanage following her mother's death. Brought up there in an atmosphere of peace and stability, she is unaware of the troubles that surround her until she goes to teach at a refugee camp at the age of 17. There, she finds herself torn between the fight for the future of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the only possible route to peace.
Film: Miral
Release date: 3rd December 2010
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Omar Metwally, Alexander Siddig, Ruba Blal
Genre: Drama
Studio: Pathe
Format: Cinema
Country: France/Israel/Italy/India
