Paradise Now

[razrif]

Paradise Now is a tense, well-acted drama about a couple of Palestinian suicide bombers whose mission goes wrong. It was due to come out in this country last summer, but disappeared from the release schedules after the London Tube blasts, which in itself constituted an apparent act of critical concession or evasion, which lingers over its release now. As long as suicide bombings were happening in a far-off Israel, this was a film which could be judged on pretty well the same basis as any other. Now our reactions are more complicated. Fear and anger in London over the suicide bombings is beginning to recede, to the extent that we almost can recall the euphoria over the London Olympics that immediately preceded them, and it's difficult to remember that the chill of horror set in not so much with 7/7, but with 21/7, and the realisation that London, like Haifa or Tel Aviv, might have to live with suicide bombers on a permanent basis.

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And it still might. Since then, Paradise Now has accumulated awards and an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. It has been condemned in some quarters in Hollywood as being pro-terrorist, and conversely there are rumours that the culture minister for the Palestinian government - whose illiberal censorship policies give further pause for thought - might ban it for being too critical of the suicide bombers.

What a tough job it is to site Paradise Now on the spectrum of opinion that these two views imply. It is about a couple of guys, friends since boyhood, who work as car mechanics in Nablus, smoking cigarettes, talking about women and generally hanging out. They are Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman). They are not particularly religious, not apparently very political (though politics turns out to be an important looming force in their background). They are reasonably happy, and there are no scenes in which they are bulldozered by the Israeli military. So it is a shock when the two men euphorically accept a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv.

Their terrorist paymasters are shown to be cold, bureaucratic, exploitative - and more than a little pompous. But the terrorists themselves, for that is what they now are, are not monsters or fanatics: they always look and sound like ordinary people. One even stops in the middle of his martyrdom video to remind his mother about shopping lists.

The middle period of the film, between the bombing going wrong, and then appearing chaotically and brutally to go right again, is dominated by a passionate young woman Suha (Lubna Azabal) who argues fiercely that what they are doing is wrong: that it is counter-productive, that suicide is against Islam and that their supposed martyrdom is highly dubious. Her voice rings out as that of sweet reason and sincerity: but the moral centre of the movie is undoubtedly with the suicide bombers, and not her. Suha's scepticism produces a kind of balance, but in the end her scepticism is ineffective.

Paradise Now takes its place in the traditional choreography of our liberal debate about terrorism: the question of whether the suicide bombings are justified is generally answered in the negative, though with the proviso that they have to be explained or contextualised. And that is what this film tries to do, powerfully, plausibly and valuably. And Israel's position? If it is guilty of state terrorism, then how about the millennia of anti-semitism, the pogroms, the death camps: don't they explain or contextualise? Or is Israel ineligible for this lenient line of argument?

Suha's vehement opposition to suicide bombings is in a way what makes the movie an uneasy experience. Dramatically, her denunciation is succeeded by a bloody finale. Her scruples are raised in order to be, in narrative terms, superseded: the bombers are duly presented with the case for the defence - but a prosecution of some sort goes ahead. Of course, the horrible outcome is a tragedy. The two men are in many ways pathetic and the sheer waste of life is terrible. All this and more is sincerely conveyed. But there is something in the way they are humanised that could be read, not as complexity, but casuistry.

Paradise Now should certainly be seen: it is an important film on an important topic. I would like to see it as a double-bill with Katie Barlow's gut-wrenching polemic Visit Palestine; and screenings should be followed by debates on whether it is possible to enter into the minds of suicide bombers without mendacity or double standards, or losing sight of the fanaticism and horror of these daily tragedies - possible, that is, in the movies or anywhere else. Perhaps it might be. Until then, it is a case of Purgatory Now.

[Amazigh Man]

Palestinian crap.... by the way it's financed and produced by producers in Holland.

[PipeRomeo]

Originally Posted by Amazigh Man

Palestinian crap.... by the way it's financed and produced by producers in Holland.

I heard many favourable reviews about it, did you see it? what didnt you like about it? It was produced by an Israeli firm...

[jasmin25]

hello

I have seen it.. It supposed to be a very good movie but which would have its taste if you are from the middle east, because someone who knows exactly what happned in palestine would react more to it. My drwaback was that I didnt understand90% of their language.
but it was nice story. recommended.

[Amazigh Man]

Originally Posted by PipeRomeo

I heard many favourable reviews about it, did you see it? what didnt you like about it? It was produced by an Israeli firm...

Hi!

I saw in the news on Dutch Channel that it was produced with Holland money! The Palestinian director has the Dutch nationality.
But the Palestinian director never mentioned it in TV... he always says it's a paletinian film.!!!!