Miral finally hits theaters today, and so far has received mixed reviews. I haven’t really shared my opinion of the film yet, and honestly all along I’ve been much more interested in the debate and discussion around the film than the film itself. When I first saw it in November I wrote:
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.
Having seen it again more recently I still think this is true, and probably the strongest aspect of the film. The film does not work as a primer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather leads the viewer to empathize with the Palestinian struggle. That is an accomplishment, especially given the decades of racist and sterotypical depictions of Palestinians and Arabs in Hollywood, but it’s really just a start.
In fact, the film is hamstrung by the dual need to tell a story, and catch the audience up on a 60-year old story they’ve never been told. One poster for the film stated “In America, you’ve only heard one side of the story, now, award winner Julian Schnabel shows you the other.” We know this is true, and this is a lot for any film to try to accomplish. The film has been criticized for excessive exposition and stilted dialogue, and I’m not going to disagree, but I also see what the filmmakers were trying to do. Many times in the film the need to explain the reality of the occupation, or the political context of the intifada, leads to awkward passages such as cutting away from a romantic picnic for a lecture on settlements, or Miral and her boyfriend making out while debating the one state vs two state solutions. But at the same time these scenes also introduce important information and ideas to an American audience that have been woefully ignorant about most of these issue. Could they have been introduced more artfully, yes, but I still think it’s an accomplishment that this first intervention has been made.
Finally, I agree with criticisms that the politics of the movie are convoluted and seem oddly behind the times. While the interviews that Jebreal and Schnabel have been giving for the film are full of intellectual and emotional vigor about the conflict, the film itself has an odd and lukewarm ending seeming to embrace the Oslo accords. Max Blumenthal’s review says it best:
Unfortunately, for all of Miral’s strengths, the film completely collapses in its final minutes as viewers are introduced to the Oslo Accords. Schnabel presents the US-brokered effort as a sincere attempt at peace and not the Trojan Horse for permanent occupation that Israel’s subsequent actions exposed it to be. It is disappointing that Schnabel chose to portray the peace process as some sort of panacea, with Yitzhak Rabin appearing on screen before cheering throngs to declare that “we are making peace,” when it has only enabled Israel to deepen its occupation and create more facts on the ground with the stamp of Western approval. Anyone who has taken a cursory glance at the Palestine Papers would have a hard time disputing that the peace process is a sham. I know American moviegoers yearn for moral clarity and golden sunsets, but Schnabel should have avoided propagandizing in favor of a discredited political process — or any “solution,” for that matter. The stories he and Jebreal presented of Palestinian women living under occupation and apartheid were powerful enough to stand on their own.
While it’s certainly true there was much hope around the signing of the accords in 1993, it felt like a particulary tone deaf and irrelevant way to end the film, given the way even casual observers know the peace process has played out.
Ultimately, the debate around the film will be its most important and enduring legacy. The mainstream Jewish community in the US has, once again, shown itself to be more interested in blocking discussion of the conflict rather than engaging in it. Most people will see the film and not understand what the controversy is about, other than the fact that it portrays Palestinians as normal people with the same aspirations and desires as anyone else. Today, there is a large two-page ad for the film in the New York Times that reprints an article from the Jewish Journal called Why can’t Jews handle ‘Miral’?. The article which begins:
Maybe it’s the simple fact that a high-profile film written by a Palestinian is cause enough for Jewish opprobrium. Maybe it’s because the director of the film, Julian Schnabel, is Jewish, and his commitment to any perspective other than the dominant Jewish paradigm is akin to tribal and national betrayal. Maybe it’s because the distributor of the film, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was reared and raised a New York Jew and should know better – haven’t the Jews and their State of Israel had it hard enough?
Or, maybe a cultural malaise has taken hold that’s made it impossible for Jews to empathize with anyone but each other.
Even if the film underwhelms at parts, this discussion has been important. Schnabel’s own path from saluting Hatikva as he watched Exodus as a child, to being detained and harrassed at Ben Gurion airport because he was travelling with a Palestinian, has been eye opening and serves as an important bellwether for a Jewish community coming to grips with the reality in Israel/Palestine. This awareness will only help open the discourse in the US, and will encourage others to speak more honest, and brutal, truths of Palestinian life under occupation. It will also hopefully lead more in the Jewish community to question how we have come to support such an inhumane situation for such a long time, and why our communal leaders don’t want the world to talk about it.
