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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/22/2010 : 23:40:34
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Julian Schnabel's tale of Palestinian female courage couldn't be further from his previous feature, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, though both are based on true tales.
Sadly, this gap isn't just in choice of subject matter, but also of style - the first film powerful and contained, whereas this is a rambling treatment, patchwork affair. Normally, I'd give the director the benefit of the doubt that such a choice was deliberate - in this case perhaps to underscore the chaotic nature of a conflict that's been raging since Israel was declared a state in 1948.
But I really don't think so. The very raggedy opening certainly isn't saved by cameos from the super-reliable Vanessa Redgravea and Willem Dafoe. Their appearances only raise expectations above some ropey dialogue and acting - expectations never picked up let alone developed into anything that resembles story-telling.
Even though Bell&Butterfly told various truths, their encasement in drama rendered the film vital - no mean feat when the protagonist is trapped in an iron lung the whole time.
In Miral - whose name, we learn early on means "those common little red flowers that grow by the roadside" - characters are introduced then dropped before we ever get to bond with them, let alone care that some are experiencing hell on earth.
I like very much that, without being at all anti-Semetic and not forgetting Schnabel's own Jewish ancestry, the film's p.o.v. is an antidote to the west's largely condemnatory perception of the Palestinian plight. But Schnabel does nothing except string together a series of incidences over more than 40 years, so we learn very little and feel even less.
We're meant to understand why a young Arab woman would take the path of rebellion given the history. But the film explains nothing, and certainly not viscerally. It's just too arbitrary in the telling, a bit like a badly-researched school report and, sadly, Schnabel too often seems way out of control.
His screen vision - actual framing, camera positioning, etc - those are as solid as you'd expect from someone who made his reputation as a painter. And perhaps, not being catty just saying - perhaps he was too close to his partner to do her screenplay the favor of brutal editing.
Shame really - there's a really important story buried somewhere in here. But, like some of the impoverished Palestinian villagers, it's been too destroyed to recognize.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/27/2010 18:59:15 |
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Miral- please see my Bafta thread
