Miral (12A) 112 mins **Artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel won legions of new admirers with 2007’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but the fanbase is unlikely to be bolstered by this turgid follow-up, a self-consciously respectable history piece undertaken not out of any urgency or relevancy, rather that it’s the sort of thing expected of a Serious Filmmaker. Colluding with novelist Rula Jebreal, Schnabel here awkwardly tacks together the experiences of four Palestinian women living in the Occupied Territories. It’s an hour before we meet the eponymous heroine, played by Slumdog’s Freida Pinto as a bright-eyed, L’Oreal-locked filly who skips from schoolgirl to political prisoner to published author without being observed writing a single word.
Schnabel uses the downtime to give his celebrity contacts a chance to show their support for the cause. Vanessa Redgrave hands round trays of entrees; Willem Dafoe shuffles on in army uniform, to no particular purpose; Miral’s guardian Hiam Abbass dons a Mrs. Merton-style granny wig. None of this can distract from the absence of credible Israeli characters, or the fact Miral never seems to have choices to make: Pinto’s altogether blithe progress is halted only so supporting characters can remark on her prettiness. Schnabel presumably intended this as a grand humanitarian gesture, but it’s an empty one, strangely bereft of drama and relentlessly uninteresting as cinema.
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