Miral

With dialogue so bad it made my toes cringe and an abundance of Schnabels visual style that doesn't fit the subject, I had trouble watching this all through to the end and thus ended up looking at cats on the internet instead. My comrades kept on snickering throughout the rest of the movie so I guess the dialogue didn't improve. Avoid.

i love schnabel but this is the most amateurish movie he has ever done

Israeli-Palestinian conflict for dummies. Awful script.

I'm surprised at Schnabel for picking this up. Jebreal's script hasn't a hint of self-awareness. It's completely one-sided and full of historical fabrication, portraying 1948 as a war of Jewish tanks against civilians (when in reality, the Jews were vastly outgunned by Arab tanks, and suffered Arab airstrikes against civilians). Still, its worst failing isn't the politics. It's that it is a maudlin, mawkish little melodrama with flat characters and highly contrived dialogue.

A passionate and aesthetically nice try to show that even in the most profound political crisis, beautiful things can arise. You are not born with a political standing, as many would think. The film reveals this idea and touches me, yes, but it tries too hard to contain all aspects of the conflict. This forces Schnabel to compromise his otherwise intelligent subjective tale-telling that was so outstanding in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

"Meant to celebrate the heroism of Palestinian women, Julian Schnabel's decades-spanning drama is mostly stilted and incomplete." - Bill Weber

The first hour is a brilliant continuation of Schnabel's personal and political lyricism, the second one too didactic by half. Could have been quite an achievement if the focus stayed on Hind Husseini, instead of switching to Miral, whose story seems underpowered and incomplete.