45
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 67Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanConfused? So is Miral, a film that makes bits and pieces of the Palestinian experience come alive without assembling them into a coherent vision.
- 63USA TodayClaudia PuigUSA TodayClaudia PuigBogged down by speechifying and a plodding pace, Miral is well-intentioned but doesn't achieve the searing emotional resonance suggested by the story.
- 60EmpireDavid HughesEmpireDavid HughesSchnabel 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.
- The lack of a compelling lead figure, combined with Schnabel's tentative approach to the material, casts the film's later stretches in the balmy glow of soap opera.
- Dramatically but unevenly explores the lives of four Palestinian women during the years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
- 50VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangSchnabel's signature blend of splintered storytelling and sobering humanism feels misapplied to this sweeping multigenerational saga.
- 50The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottTo 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.
- 40Village VoiceNick PinkertonVillage VoiceNick PinkertonMiral is a very flat, fuddled movie, an at-odds-with-itself partisan work, its convictions diffused in a warm soak of style.
- 40Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfA perfectly boring movie from Julian Schnabel - is it possible?
- 40MovielineStephanie ZacharekMovielineStephanie ZacharekSo 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.