First Look: Miral Review

First Look: Miral Review: As part of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, filmmaker Julian Schnabel and writer Rula Jebreal were in town last night for a screening of their new film Miral. It's the kind of movie that garners buckets of senseless political backlash, a lot of it from people who have never even seen it and have no intention of doing so. Well, we saw it and found it unexpectedly moving.

Based on Jebreal's autobiographical novel, the movie tells the story of Miral, born to a deeply troubled woman as the result of rape. After her mother takes her own life Miral grows up at Dar Al-Tifel Institute, an orphanage for Palestinian children in Jerusalem. Her adopted father, a kind-hearted cleric, tries to understand and support her even as she becomes a restless teenager. Awakening to the suffering of her people and not content to just wait for things to get better, her increasing political involvement begins to get her in hot water.

As in his other films, such as Before Night Falls and especially The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schnabel focuses on giving the viewer a very subjective personal experience mirroring the journey of the characters onscreen. Vivid, almost hallucinogenic colors, tilt-shift photography, and rough handheld camerawork are used at various moments to lend palpable textures, without ever overwhelming the central story.

The masterful use of some particularly lovely violin songs by Laurie Anderson is icing on the cake. But it's the coupling of authentic locations with fine performances, including Freida Pinto as Miral, and arresting vignettes from Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe, that truly make the film so moving. We're placed in an environment lacking stability and safety, yet somehow Israelis and Palestinians alike manage to go about their day-to-day lives: raising children, putting food on the table, falling in love.

Miral largely concerns itself with the story of its main character. Unfolding against a backdrop of confusing turmoil it's surprisingly straightforward and easy to relate to, both for adults and teens (more than once Miral shouts "You understand nothing!" at an adult, something teens have been doing for generations). Why then all the controversy? It's a purposefully small-scale film. Although the movie ends on the eve of the 1993 Oslo peace accord, certainly a bittersweet moment considering the morass of the current situation, it does not attempt to tell the history of the Israeli state or the Palestinian struggle. Some may call that one-sided or even biased; Schnabel himself has proudly concurred, saying, “We need to understand ‘the other.’ And that’s the reason I made the movie about ‘the other’ from ‘the other’s’ point of view.”

It's deeply frustrating: the making of a film told from the point of view of a Palestinian girl is considered a political act; the distribution of this film as well as the mere act of watching it are also considered political acts. We ought to ask ourselves why this is--why is it considered so dangerous to watch a movie which attempts to show us things from a different perspective? Schnabel's fearless commitment to his artistic vision should be applauded and not derided.