Middle East conflict made human

Any film as politically specific as Miral needs to be addressed on two levels, as a movie and as, from a certain viewpoint, a polemic. If a viewer can separate one from the other - and some may not - there's an intense, novelistic drama here.

In 1948 Palestine, following the implementing of the United Nations' two-state solution, social worker Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) takes in 55 Palestinian orphans displaced by military action. Almost by accident, she starts a girls' orphanage and school.

We then briefly meet Nadia, whose damaged life includes a brief imprisonment. While in jail she meets Jamal (Alexander Siddig), the brother of an inmate. Jamal marries her upon her release, despite Nadia's being pregnant with another man's child. That child, born in 1973, is Miral, placed in Hind's orphanage school at age 5. At 17, Miral (now played by Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto) is challenged by her cousin's relationship with a Jewish girl, while becoming a supporter of the militant intifada movement.

Director Julian Schnabel and cinematographer Eric Gautier imbue the film with distinctive looks: Early glimpses at parties and homecomings before 1948 have a sepia-toned calm; scenes in which Miral's mother embodies the unsettled late '60s are hazy and smoky. For the early '90s, the film is crisp and attentive, alert to danger. Schnabel, whose Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly used similarly exquisite visuals to powerful effect, is a master at quickly immersing us in emotions.

Yet Rula Jebreal's script, adapted from her novel, falters in its final third, when Miral's political awakening - which looked to become a tragic distillation of the lives that led to it - turns oddly passive.

Miral ** (out of four stars)

Directed by Julian Schnabel. With Frieda Pinto, Willem Dafoe. Distributed by the Weinstein Co.

Running time: 1 hour, 52 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (violence, sexuality)

Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse