Combining narrative heavy-handedness with an airy disdain for the details of the situation, director Julian Schnabel gives us a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in “Miral.”
“Slumdog Millionaire” star Freida Pinto plays the title character, who is based on the protagonist of a novel by Schnabel’s girlfriend, Rula Jebreal. She is a Palestinian teacher who becomes increasingly radicalized by outrageous behavior on the part of Israel, whose troops in one scene inexplicably blunder in to tear down an Arab building on a few minutes’ notice.
Acts such as placing a bomb in a theater full of unsuspecting Jews are presented as perfectly natural responses to Israel’s vicious depredations — and even that terrorist attack is used to make an idiotic point about the alleged unfairness of Israel’s justice system. The bomber is given two life sentences (presumably for the loss of life she has caused), plus a third because the judge thinks she is being rude by not standing for sentencing. Thus is the judge’s snarkiness presented as roughly equivalent to a vicious multiple murder.
Schnabel thinks he has put together an ironic and fair portrait of the situation, but his half-hearted plea for everyone to get along in the end titles doesn’t come close to compensating for the moral errors of this slanderous and shameful piece of propaganda.