Dramatically but unevenly explores the lives of four Palestinian women during the years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
To say that Mr. Schnabel's film is innocuous is not to say that it's any good. Like so many other well-intentioned movies about politically contentious issues, it is hobbled by its own sincerity and undone by a confused aesthetic agenda.
Bogged down by speechifying and a plodding pace, Miral is well-intentioned but doesn't achieve the searing emotional resonance suggested by the story.
Schnabel doesn't comes close to the quiet power of his last feature, "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly," delivering a story that can't match the scope or scale of Rula Jebreal's source material.
A perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?
Schnabel's signature blend of splintered storytelling and sobering humanism feels misapplied to this sweeping multigenerational saga.
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
Miral is a very flat, fuddled movie, an at-odds-with-itself partisan work, its convictions diffused in a warm soak of style.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Confused? So is Miral, a film that makes bits and pieces of the Palestinian experience come alive without assembling them into a coherent vision.
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
So much of Abbas' dialogue consists of stiff platitudes (the script is by journalist Rula Jebreal, based on her novel of the same name); the character she's playing has been reduced to a dull, saintly figure, and not even Abbas can find a way out of that miniature prison.