Today, I saw Julian Schnabel's new film Miral. It won't be arriving in theaters in the US until next March, so it will be awhile until we see what effect it has, but my initial impression was amazement at what I was watching. Here was a film following many of the conventions of a traditional Hollywood film, but this time it was telling the Palestinian liberation story (which might explain why it was not produced in Hollywood and instead was a French/Israeli/Italian/Indian co-production).
The film, based on Rula Jebreal's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, takes us from the Nakba, and children orphaned during the Deir Yassin massacre, through the first Intifada to the signing of the Oslo Accords. I know there will be criticisms, and I have a few that I'll share later, but right now I am struck by the emotional impact of the film. You follow the lead character through checkpoints, refugee camps, home demolitions, interrogations, humiliations and protests. After that it is impossible to not understand, and feel, the Palestinian call for justice.
Many times on this site we have reflected on the 1960 film Exodus that helped form a view of Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a generation of moviegoers. It would unrealistic to expect Miral to carry a similar cultural weight, but it is resonable to draw a line connecting the two and ask whether this film might reflect a current moment where understandings of Israel/Palestine are shifting radically. It appears this thinking might not be too far from the filmmaker's own experience. The press notes distributed at the screening quote Schnabel as saying the following:
Before I made this film, I hardly knew anything about Palestinians. But I've been following the story of Israel my whole life. As a child, I remember watching Exodus at Manhattan's Rivoli Theatre with my parents. Everybody stood up when they sang Hatikvah and put their hands on their chests. My mother and father were very proud. I recently learned from my sister Andrea that my mother was President of Hadassah in Brooklyn . . . in 1948, the year of Israel's birth. Making this film in Jerusalem allowed me to see this world for the first time, and to work with a landscape that I needed to see.
Many others need to see this landscape as well, and hopefully Miral will introduce them to it.
Update:
A Mondoweiss reader recommends that Netflix users add the movie to their film queue to show that this is an interested audience for the film. You can find it here.
I am eager to see it as well.
I hope that it is as informative and inspiring as Exodus.
As a young Catholic kid I was emotionally wiped out by the film Exodus. Read the book too.
In my teens I became obsessed with reading one WWII book after the other. My mother would come into my room because I would be sobbing reading the descriptions of the gas chambers, the brutality, separation of families, the mass murders. I would sometimes scream out to her how could people let this happen? She would sit on my bed and we would weep together. But she would encourage me to stop reading these historical books. The pictures the horrific pictures of the camps, the piles of skin and bones corpses… The brutality, the death, the unimaginable cruelty and horrific crimes committed against million of Jews, Poles, Gypsies etc. I would weep and weep uncontrollably wondering how the world had allowed this atrocity to take place.
Then Vietnam
Darfur
And now with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people who have been murdered, injured, millions displaced as a direct consequence of the Bush administrations (our country, our military) invasion of Iraq. I still wonder why are people sitting back, driving to the malls, not responding, not outraged?
What is it when individuals are incapable of extending the same empathy, compassion that they want directed towards themselves or “their people” but are unable to extend that to others? What is this all about?
It is about fear (because “they” are described as enemies which THREATEN American interests (but which interest, whose, is not explained); and about justification for guilt-reduction: we must protect ourselves from guilt (for all the killing and maiming we are doing to them) by justifying all the killing and maiming. then we can ignore what we’re doing to them, because they deserve it, they are bad, etc., and bad because they are “our enemies” even though that is so merely because we attacked them.
or complete indifference and self consumption
Julian Schnabel is a big time enough director that the movie should find an audience. Like any movie of this kind, it will be judged on the merits. Exodus did well because it was critically acclaimed. Cast a Giant Shadow was a flop for the same reason (though IMHO Exodus is a good but not great movie, and Cast a Giant Shadow is not horrible.)
I still wonder why are people sitting back, driving to the malls, not responding, not outraged?
1. They don’t see.
2. They are preoccupied with their own real troubles (not fake and not less important)
3. The world that we live in is not characterized by revolutionary movements, suicide bombings, resource wars. We are spoiled, those of us that are indifferent to the sufferings of others, and those that are unnaturally obsessed.
“We are spoiled, those of us that are indifferent to the sufferings of others, and those that are unnaturally obsessed.”
I would say that Art and Peggy Gish, Norman Finkelstein, Former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu might be described as “unnaturally obsessed” with human rights issues. Certainly would not refer to any of them as “spoiled” Would describe them as tapping into the well of empathy and compassion that I believe resides in all of us. They keep tapping into that well.
That’s funny, I avoided the hell out of the film. Wouldn’t come within a mile of it. It just smelled like BS, even when I was a child.
But that’s, I guess, a consequence of being Jewish, you can get a little cynical about entertainment.
And Witty, with you as an alternative, I’m glad, so glad I did. I’d explain to you how movies are developed, made and marketed, but I don’t interfere with other people’s religion.
And still, the movie informed more than it misrepresented.
There are MANY movies that look trivial 50 years after. Actually, compared to most, Exodus comes out quite real.
Yeah, really informative; it reminded me of a French Airline’s 1953 film ad encouraging Americans to take a trip to Israel. Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint–and didn’t Pat Boone write the theme? When I was a kid I was inspired by Custer’s Last Stand.
From what you wrote about the film I assume that it will have great difficulty finding a film distributor in America, will probably be ignored by critics, and will play for a short time in New York to audiences that read Mondoweiss.
Sorry, I didn’t mention this in the post, but it’s being distributed in the US by The Weinstein Company – link to weinsteinco.com
Here’s a post on the LA Time website (link to latimesblogs.latimes.com
With Freida Pinto as the lead, “Miral” examines the founding of the Dar Al-Tifel Institute orphanage for Palestinian refugees in 1948, and then flashes forward to Pinto’s character, who was raised in the orphanage, as a young woman in the early 1990s, when she goes to work in a refugee camp, where she is caught in a quandary between violent and peaceful means of resistance. It’s probably the most mainstream film project to take a Palestinian point of view on the genesis and modern aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“As a staunch supporter of Israel I thought this would be a movie I would have a hard time wrapping my head around,” [Harvey] Weinstein said in a statement. “However, meeting Rula moved me to open my heart and mind, and I hope we can do the same with audiences worldwide.”
Adam,
have you guys posted about this before, it seems familar but I can’t place where I saw it at.
nevermind, I think JPOST had something about it on it’s website.
Yeah, I think we’d mentioned it, but nothing in depth.
Where did you see it?
“The film, based on Rula Jebreal’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, takes us from the Nakba, and children orphaned during the Deir Yassin massacre, through the first Intifada to the signing of the Oslo Accords”
that is covering some territory. About 15 years ago a film maker friend went into Palestinian refugee camps, lots of interviews, great historical over view etc in his documentary. When he tried to show the documentary in the states, protest, he and his family were threatened many times. We have come a long way.
Cant’ wait to see the film
Press screening. Running a blog for a pittance does occasionally have its advantages. ;)
Unfortunately, it looks like it was supposed to come out at the height of award season next month, but got pushed back after a lukewarm response at a few festivals – link to variety.com
You deserve it. A recommendation from you says a great deal. That trailer does look like Hollywood made the film, and that young lady is quite beautiful which will bring in plenty of folks.
Folks need to get the history even if it has a Hollywood edge.
Had some flashbacks watching the school girls in uniforms. I grew up in Catholic schools. Uniforms, all girls, perfect lines. The comparisons stop there. Can’t wait to see.
Adam any word on what took place at the Hebron fund raising protest?
I’m very pleased and excited that Julian has definitely decided that film (at which he obviously excels) not painting is his final choice for a medium of expression. Not only that, with a content and subject matter that now touches to the sublime one can only forgive him for the moments of intense suffering he made me endure in the 80s. From the very bottom of my heart, my eternal gratitude, mr. Schnabel.
Sorry, but Basquiat sucked. Downtown 81 is what you really wanted and if you don’t know, you better ax somebody.
Basquiat was his first, I think..One can understand..But damn the paintings were painful to see!
Pro Palestine
Pro Israel
Pro Peace.
The more the facts get out there the better
Adam how accurate were the historical facts based on your knowledge?
From what I could tell it seemed very accurate, but it also dealt much more with family history, and less with large recognizable events, etc.
Glad to see this film-maker tackling the decades-long Palestinian struggle and tragedy. Hope this film raises awareness and reverses the bias, and I especially hope it leads to more films on this subject and a breakthrough for Palestinians.
On another note:
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan set a precedent among world leaders when he stood up to Peres at Davos over Cast Lead, and then again stood up for the victims of the Flotilla Massacre. This man is leading the way to disengaging from the Apartheid State of Israel.
So please go to Time Magazine’s website and vote him 2010 Person of the Year.:
link to time.com
link to ynetnews.com
Erdogan and Assange are tied for me. Can not even believe Lady Gaga, Jon Stewart, Colbert, Palin, Beck are even up on that list. Aye yi yi
Although where is Bradley Manning
I voted for both of them.
Erdogan’s leading?.
I voted for Erdoğan, also for Assange.
No way. I think if you’re going to oppose Zionism, principle matters and boosting an opportunistic leader of a regularly bloody state isn’t the way to go about it.
But this is a much stronger voice on the matter.
link to sawtalniswa.com
Oh I can hardly wait thank you thank you thank you Mr. Shnabel and his filmmaking team!
I’ve also just seen Ajami on Netflix – what a white-knuckle ride that was! But brilliant!
Also last month I got given a movie called David and Fatima, a Palestinian-Israeli Romeo and Juliette with a couple of young unknowns for lead and Martin Landau and Tony Curtis (his last film) playing support roles and the rest of the cast was mixed Israeli and Arab – anyone seen that movie?
Hey I gotta say it excites me when the arts get political!
Thanks for the recommendations