Miral – review

Julian Schnabel – whose The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was so outstanding – has got himself into a terrible muddle with his movie Miral, based on a novel by Palestinian writer Rula Jebreal. The movie is unable to tell the heroine's story in a clear and compelling way; instead it gets first entangled in the (tiresome) story of the Jerusalem children's home where Miral was brought up, which was founded by a quite different character, Hind Husseini, played by Hiam Abbass. The focus is fatally divided from the outset and Freida Pinto looks uneasy and miscast as Miral herself.