Miral

Last Monday a friend and I viewed Miral, the new motion picture by German director Julian Schnabel. Miral (Frieda Pinto) is set against the backdrop of Jerusalem before and during the Palestinian uprising (intifada) against the Israeli occupying forces. We follow the story of Miral's mother and father, the childhood and subsequent teenagehood of the young Miral. It is essentially the story of a young woman blossoming into adulthood at a time where her country and it's people are plummeted into Israeli occupation, but also the tale of Hind Hussaini, a Palestinian schoolmistress whose great work is respected during this movie.

Miral's mother, raped as a teenager flees her home only to enter a life of alcohol abuse as a dancer in Jerusalem's nightpots. She is eventually arrested for mildly assaulting an Israeli woman on a packed bus. She spends some years in prison and there befriends an attempted suicide bomber- when her time to leave prison arrives, Miral's mother marries her inmate's brother (Alexander Siddig) who has fallen in love with her and is many years her senior. A child is born- Miral who is not biologically this man's daughter, but whom he loves and cherishes nevertheless. As a teenanger Miral takes the road of following the intifada while simultaneously being schooled at the pacifistic education centre founded and headed by the exceptional Hind Hussaini (Hiam Abbas), who devotes her life to housing and educating Palestine's homeless and forgotten female children, ina bid to prevent them following the road of terrorism by using education as a force of progress. After entering an uprising group being temporarily imprisoned and falling in love with the head of this group, Miral's father dies and she eventually takes Hind's advice to leave Palestine and go to study in Italy using a scholarship.

This is  touching tale and Hiam Abbas delivers a beautiful rendition of the praiseworthy Hind Hussaini. Always serious and emotional in her performances, and she was no different in Miral. It is not difficult to see why frieda Pinto was chosen to portray young Miral as her outstanding beauty and elegance bedazzles throughout the movie. it would however have been nice to have used an up and coming Arab actress in order to honour the story which Schnabel was telling. It was nevertheless a flawless performance by world-renouned Slumdog Millionaire star Pinto, we look forward to her future films.