Many complain that the film is one-sided, but the truth of the matter is it is a character study told from the perspective of our protagonists. Telling anything but their story would be an affront on the characters themselves.

| Jul 21, 2021

Simply seems to have missed the mark.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 17, 2020

Miral seems more interested in its own prestige than in the characters it seeks to portray.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 5, 2018

Schnabel makes it known from the beginning that he wants to educate as well as entertain, although what he delivers is a potted history rather than something insightful or culturally minded.

| May 14, 2018

Miral overrides its screenwriting flaws with Schnabel's uncanny sense of film art.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2012

...sporadically engrossing yet thoroughly uneven...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 12, 2011

Schnabel dedicates Miral to "everyone on both sides who still believes peace is possible"-a noble sentiment, to be sure, but will anyone on either side really see themselves reflected in such a simplistic, ham-fisted treatment?

| May 11, 2011

Though it self-evidently has a Message about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, [it] makes virtually no effort to clearly explain what that Message is.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 28, 2011

A mess.

| Apr 28, 2011

[T]here are plenty of nonpolitical reasons to frown upon Miral: it's simply not a very engaging film, even to those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause...

| Apr 25, 2011

Might have been better as a documentary.

| Apr 22, 2011

...if you're going to ask the audience to piece together the meaning of a scene for themselves, don't cue the conclusion with a soundtrack full of familiar emotional cues.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 15, 2011

The director injects some showy images into the mix but, without a defined frame for Schnabel to paint in, "Miral" is an unholy mess.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 15, 2011

Impassioned, but also dramatically disjointed and emotionally parched.

| Original Score: C- | Apr 14, 2011

Schnabel is free to make a film sympathetic to the Palestinians, of course, but such distortions and selective history make this little more than an arty propaganda film.

| Apr 8, 2011

What "Miral" lacks in performance art, Schnabel attempts to replace with design.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 7, 2011

It feels strangely undernourished, as if the filmmakers were afraid to really let go and express big emotions.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 7, 2011

The didactic approach and hodge-podge structure diminish the film's heart and Schnabel's dreamy imagery.

| Apr 7, 2011

The film is an uninvolving mess, though a thoughtfully composed jumble of emotions and time periods ambitiously reaching for a distressing screen poeticism it never achieves.

| Original Score: D+ | Apr 7, 2011

Miral has the pedigree, the attitude, the weighty subject matter. It's just not much of a movie.

| Original Score: C- | Apr 1, 2011