Why can’t Jews handle ‘Miral’?
March 15, 2011 | 1:54 pm
The Jewish Journal
Posted by Danielle Berrin
http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew/item/why_cant_jews_handle_mira...
Maybe it’s the simple fact that a high-profile film written by a Palestinian is cause enough for Jewish opprobrium. Maybe it’s because the director of the film, Julian Schnabel, is Jewish, and his commitment to any perspective other than the dominant Jewish paradigm is akin to tribal and national betrayal. Maybe it’s because the distributor of the film, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was reared and raised a New York Jew and should know better – haven’t the Jews and their State of Israel had it hard enough?
Or, maybe a cultural malaise has taken hold that’s made it impossible for Jews to empathize with anyone but each other.
That the film ‘Miral,’ a portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seen through the eyes of an orphaned Palestinian girl is earning the early ire of mainstream Jewish groups is not at all surprising. It makes perfect sense that a film told from the Palestinian perspective would rouse cries of condemnation from the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and others for being “one-sided” as AJC’s executive director David Harris wrote earlier this week, protesting the screening of the film for the U.N. General Assembly in New York (since when do Hollywood movies have an obligation to objectivity?). Another knee-jerk reaction came from SWC founder Rabbi Marvin Hier who called the screening of the film “anti-Israel” in a widely- released statement.
But this early condemnation is short-sighted and unfair. And not just to the film itself, but to the conversation American Jews might be having about Israel. That conversation, if it has any hope of pushing past party-line radicalism and a peace process stalemate, demands and deserves more than one perspective, as well as a deeper understanding of the ‘other’ – which a film like ‘Miral’ provides.
The Torah, Judaism’s most sacred text, admonishes again and again ‘love the stranger’, ‘remember the stranger’, ‘be kind to the stranger’ because ‘you were slaves in the land of Egypt.’ Have we forgotten? Or have we become so mired in our own neuroses about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and general Jewish existentialism that we can’t see past our own noses?
Schnabel doesn’t have that problem. In fact, the making of this film became a bridge both creatively and personally. According to Vanity Fair, he met Italian-Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal at a party in 2007 and was so taken with her and the semi-autobiographical book upon which ‘Miral’ is based, he left his wife and committed himself to Jebreal and her story. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself…’
At the panel discussion following the screening last night, Rabbi Irwin Kula suggested that that’s exactly what’s missing in the conflict, noting an egregious lack of empathy on both sides.
“After 63 years of conventional diplomatic efforts, we’re pretty far away right now,” Kula, the president of CLAL, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership said. “The conflict has literally crowded out the possibility of empathy on all sides.”
But film, he said, according to a press release, allows people to experience empathy for a character. “As everyone knows you can’t have understanding without empathy. And this film is fundamentally a meditation on empathy.”
Why is it then that when a respected and talented filmmaker such as Mr. Schnabel says that he feels a personal Jewish responsibility “to tell the story of the other side” he is reproved and not praised? Such an admission makes Schnabel one of those rarefied artists with the courage to challenge established paradigms in his work – which, I might add, is a Jewish thing to do. But instead of averring the dignity of his position, and the openness with which he is broaching the Israeli-Palestinian juggernaut, Schnabel is put on the defensive.
“I love the State of Israel,” he said after the U.N. screening. “I believe in it, and my film is about preserving it, not hurting it. Understanding is part of the Jewish way and Jewish people are supposed to be good listeners. But, if we don’t listen to the other side, we can never have peace.”
Maybe, when it comes to geopolitical conflicts, there is a problem of perennially bad timing. No doubt Schnabel’s film, which is openly and purposely sympathetic to the Palestinian position, will become the subject of even more undue scorn during a week in which Jewish blood was spilled at the hands of a Palestinian terrorist. Days ago, five members of the Fogel family were brutally slaughtered in their home in Itamar, a settlement in the West Bank. The sad fact of this tragedy will make it even harder for Jewish hearts to open. Especially during a week of tremendous heartbreak and grief, a week in which Jewish blood is up and anger is raging.
But even in grief, it’s a mistake to extrapolate blame for the actions of one man upon an entire people – just as Schnabel’s film about a sympathetic character does not render all Palestinians sympathetic characters. ‘Miral’ is primarily a portrait of one life, through which the plight of a people is surmised. That’s not to say there is no such thing as Palestinian terrorism, because there is; or that no Palestinians deserve Jewish scorn, because some do. But the reverse is also true: Israel has done wrong, Jews have hurt Palestinians.
“As a Jewish American, I can categorically state that I would not be releasing a film that was flagrantly biased towards Israel or Judaism,” Harvey Weinstein said in a statement. “‘Miral’ tells a story about a young Palestinian woman, but that does not make it a polemic. By stifling discussion or pre-judging a work of art, we only perpetuate the prejudice that does so much harm.”
Indeed, ‘Miral’ is asking us to pause from our consideration of Palestinians as ‘the other’ and instead to see a people with whom we might partner. It is asking us to consider the millions of Palestinians who are not terrorists, who desire economic opportunity, civil liberties and a chance to swim in the Mediterranean Sea.
If, as American Jews, we can’t even watch a movie in peace, I fear what that means for the peace prospects of an entire nation—or rather, two.
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Review from the Washington Post:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gO7- wT475cv9edd1bgToX4GTIZSw?docId=CNG.db1c0ef23fe99a31e1969f560de0ade2.11
Slumdog Movie Star Turns Defiant Palestinian Girl
By DIAA HADID
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 7, 2010; 5:53 PM
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (AP) - The Indian actress who starred in "Slumdog Millionaire" has moved from the slums of Mumbai to the squalid refugee camps of the West Bank in a new film: the story of a defiant Palestinian girl who wants to fight against Israel in a coming of age story with a Mideast twists.
"Miral," directed by award-winning artist Julian Schnabel and with cameos by Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave, stands apart for more than its star power.
Due for U.S. release in December, it's also likely to give Western audiences _ some perhaps more used to movies depicting Arabs as violent Islamic militants _ a compassionate view of the Palestinians.
For Mumbai-raised Freida Pinto, 25, who became a star after Slumdog shot from obscurity to box-office success and eight Academy Awards, it was a chance for a different setting.
"Miral" sweeps across decades of the Mideast conflict. The cinematography lays out beautiful Palestinian landscapes and Pinto glows in her scenes. But the dialogue comes across at times as preachy, and Schnabel seems to try pack in as much Palestinian history as possible in the 112-minute film.
For the filmmakers, the message is the key.
"The ordinary American who knows nothing about Palestine and knows nothing about our cause _ it will be the first time he will sit and watch this story," said Yasmine al-Massri, a 31-year-old Paris-based Palestinian actress who plays Pinto's mother.
At a news conference in Ramallah before the screening late Thursday, some Palestinian movie crew members said they hoped Pinto's star power would draw audiences into cinemas and that Schnabel's Jewish faith would deflect claims of bias.
"It's a Jewish American director who is telling a Palestinian story," said al-Massri.
Schnabel was named "best director" at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 and awarded him a top prize for his movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
Pinto brings wide experience to the role despite her youth. She is currently appearing as a neighbor of a conflicted writer in the latest Woody Allen movie, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and will co-star in the upcoming Greek mythology action tale "Immortals" and a "Planet of the Apes" prequel, "Rise of the Apes."
In "Miral," which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month, Pinto's title heroine is sent to a Palestinian children's institution in Jerusalem when her alcoholic mother commits suicide and her conservative Muslim father struggles to raise her.
Headstrong, Miral tumbles into the political storms lashing around her: it's the late 1980s and Palestinians are rebelling against Israel's military occupation. Miral tries to fight Israel and battle her father, at the same time as she falls for a handsome Palestinian fighter.
The movie was filmed over three months in 2009 with a crew of about 150 people and a budget of $15 million, according to local crew members.
It's based on the tumultuous biography of Palestinian-Italian journalist Rula Jebreal, stretching back in time to tell the stories of her mother, her mother's savior, a nurse hardened by war who tries to bomb an Israeli cinema, and her older mentor, the real-life figure of Hind Husseini, who rescued children during the war that followed Israel's creation.
It moves among scenes of Palestinian youths hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, children fleeing violence and whispered conversations between imprisoned women. It crisscrosses between the cities of Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, now mixed Arab-Jewish cities in modern-day Israel. There are scenes in Jerusalem and the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
At Thursday night's screening in Ramallah that kicked off a local film festival, hundreds of Palestinians crammed into the Kasabeh movie burst into applause and laughter during a scene when a shiny-eyed Pinto tells her mentor Husseini that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had signed a peace deal _ 17 years later, peace talks have produced few results.
The audience seemed less convinced when, in another scene, Pinto kisses her boyfriend passionately as he explains how much land Palestinians will have in their future state.
The movie views historical events through Palestinian eyes, like the massacre of over 100 residents of the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948 by Jewish militants in the war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel.
In real life, as in the movie, children fleeing Deir Yassin were adopted by Husseini. She created an orphanage for them that eventually became a boarding school, partly for troubled children. It is now a Jerusalem Arab girl's school.
Pinto said in an August interview with the New York Times that she thought the film would make waves. "I knew it was going to be one of those stories that will create a lot of controversy."
Actress al-Massri said the movie could serve as a reminder of why Palestinians and Israelis needed to be pushed to peace.
"This movie is important because it is real," she said. "Everything we are saying, everything you are seeing, every action, every word you see is real. It happened, and its still happening in the everyday life of the Palestinian and Israeli people."