Movies are not important. Despite what critics, producers, writers, directors, actors, IMDb commentors, or anyone else thinks, there's nothing about a movie that is inherently, genetically important. There are rarely, if ever, any dire consequences in choosing to watch a movie — no one's life is depending on it. The country, the planet, the universe could not care less about your film going habits.
But a great film can certainly affect us profoundly. This is an experience that we cherish and revere, and since we are so defensive of our emotional lives we define these compelling moments as important. The experience may be important, but the film is not. The film's just a vehicle, a messenger, a ploy to insinuate into our lives someone else's experience. That's why this film, Miral, is not nearly as wonderful as it could have been. It seems to have the attitude that it's important. This pompous disposition is not obvious, not flagrant, but it is persistent and distracting. And the great irony of it is that Julian Schnabel has purposely contrived his film hoping to avoid this very accusation.
It's a decidedly modest, nuanced and low key depiction of the terrible situation in the middle east as seen almost exclusively from the view point of Palestinian women. The film is self consciously playing against the thunderous, deafening roar of western media coverage of the conflict. Today we are daily deluged with horrific videos, graphic images and hysterical hyperbolic reports of the conflict; a formidable din over which sincere voices labor to be heard. So by playing it softly - speaking under the crowd - Miral draws attention to itself. Isn't that what a film is supposed to do, distinguish itself? Well, normally yes, a film doesn't have much choice but to flaunt itself, toot its own horn. But when the subject is so fundamentally daunting, so depressingly perplexing, so infuriatingly confounding - so important - it's bad taste to insist that we acknowledge the story teller as much as the story. By going so blatantly against the grain with his curious cinematic style Schnabel has directed our attention more so to his creation - and himself - at the expense of his film's subject. His artful approach served him so well in his previous films but here it sabotages his efforts. And just to be sure he's torpedoed the whole enterprise he closes it with the doleful, raspy croak of that beloved Palestinian crooner, Tom Waits. Tom Waits?! Oy vey, that's meshugenah!
Avoiding the cliché, dodging the obvious, scorning the conventional is the mortal pledge of any worthwhile artist, and so Julian can be partly forgiven his miscalculations. But an unpardonable fault is the lack of a truly capable, compelling character for us to focus on. His stars are beautiful and photogenic but so overwhelmed with the responsibilities with which they have been charged. They just don't have the chops to command our attention, and so our gaze and thoughts fix on other things, such as the film's distinctive stylization, and it's leap-frog time sequencing. The dialog is so stilted and labored; the actresses too often "reading" their lines. (Except, of course, Vanessa Redgrave, who should have been in much more of the film, maybe even reading everyone else's lines!) Though it's based on a true story many scenes ring false. I often found myself thinking "what a clever, well meaning film." That's a thought no film should ever illicit, at least not till it's over. While it's happening you should be engulfed in an experience, oblivious of yourself.
Set in the locale of what may well be "ground zero" in determining the fate of our world, Schnabel should have played up to the roiling, cacophonous, volcanic environment into which his film softly whispers. Despite that old corny expression about whispers and wanting to be heard, this is one time when it would have been better to be bold. Its tag line, "Is this the face of a terrorist?," sadly points to the film's greatest weakness - for all its gestures towards profundity, it's too focused on the "face" and not the heart and soul. Miral is too cute for its own good.
