Miral

“Miral is a red flower. It grows on the side of the road. You’ve probably seen millions of them.”

Those words open Miral, which is also the name of the last of four women at the centre of Julian Schnabel’s passionate new film. Those words, with their vivid imagery, their resonance and their ability to act as description, lament and warning all at once, sum up the nuances of this remarkable drama. The setting is Israel and Palestine, from 1948 to the mid-nineties. The tales may not be new, but the telling is.

The first of the four women is Hind Husseini (a real-life figure played by Hiam Abbass). After the 1948 conflict that led to the creation of Israel, Hind happens upon fifty-five newly orphaned children in the streets of Jerusalem. All heart, she takes them in and founds an orphanage for girls that soon houses thousands.

The second woman is Nadia (Yasmine Elmasri), who fled her home after being abused by her father. When a Jewish woman on a bus calls her an “Arab whore,” Nadia bloodies the woman’s nose before being hauled away by the police. In prison she meets the third woman, Fatima who was convicted of planting a bomb in a theatre. The explosive never went off, but Fatima was given two life sentences for the act, and another for not standing politely in the courtroom. Fatima introduces Nadia to her brother, (Alexander Siddiq), who eventually proposes. Together, they have a lovely daughter named Miral (Freida Pinto) – the fourth woman.

In Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schnabel proved himself adept at extraordinary portraits of subjective experiences. Miral is imbued with the exquisite camera and sound work he’s become known for, but the portraiture is more precise than expressionist,matching an emotional arc with apolitical one. As each of these four women face progressively harsher circumstances, they craft increasingly engaged responses. –TIFF