Paradise Now

[Ravi]

Official Site

"PARADISE NOW" is the story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. On a typical day in the West Bank city of Nablus, where daily life grinds on amidst crushing poverty and the occasional rocket blast, we meet two childhood best friends, Saïd (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), who pass time drinking tea, smoking a hookah, and working dead-end menial jobs as auto mechanics.

Saïd's day takes a turn for the better when a beautiful young woman named Suha (Lubna Azabal) brings her car in for repairs. From their spirited interaction, it is apparent that there is a budding romance growing between them.

Saïd is approached by middle-aged Jamal (Amer Hlehel), a point man for an unnamed Palestinian organization who informs Saïd that he and Khaled have been chosen to carry out a strike in Tel Aviv. They have been chosen for this mission as a team, because each had expressed a wish that if either is to die a martyr, the other would want to die alongside his best friend.

Saïd and Khaled have been preparing for this moment for most of their lives. They spend a last night at home -- although they must keep their impending mission secret even from their families. During the night Saïd sneaks off to see Suha one last time. Suha's moderate views, having been educated in Europe, and Saïd's burgeoning conflicted conscience cause him to stop short of explaining why he has come to say good-bye.

The following day, Saïd and Khaled are lead to a hole in the fence that marks the Israeli border, where they are to meet a driver who will take them to Tel Aviv. But here the plan goes wrong, and Saïd and Khaled are separated.

"PARADISE NOW" follows two Palestinian childhood friends who have been recruited for a strike on Tel Aviv and focuses on their last days together. When they are intercepted at the Israeli border and separated from their handlers, a young woman who discovers their plan causes them to reconsider their actions.

Winner of multiple prizes at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, and invited to be presented at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, the film was written by Hany Abu-Assad ("Ford Transit," "Rana's Wedding") & Bero Beyer and directed by Abu-Assad, and stars Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azaba., "PARADISE NOW" is a production of Augustus Film with Lama Films, Razor Film, Lumen Films, Arte France Cinema, Hazazah Film and produced with the support of Nederlands Fonds Voor De Film, Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Eurimages, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, I2I Preparatory Action of the European Community and World Cinema Fund.

Directed by:
Hany Abu-Assad

Cast: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel, Hiam Abbass

This film has been rated PG-13 for mature thematic material and brief strong language.




I saw this yesterday.  The film is interesting in its rather mundane build-up to the preparations for the suicide bombing plot.  Khaled and Said are seen working in the car repair shop, being with their families, etc.  And even when the preparations start, its done matter-of-factly.  The sequence of Khaled trying to find Said is a little too long, and the near-finds are kind of hokey.  I don't feel like I can discuss it further without major spoilers.  It does offer a counter-argument to the idea of suicide bombing, but it doesn't ram it down your throat, and that's not the point of the film anyways.

[pete]

I was reading the article on it in this month's American Cinematographer and the shooting sounded intense, with militants and machine guns and death threats from all factions and such.

[hedwig]

i saw the trailer for this before Good Night and Good Luck and thought it was the trailer for Munich 

[Pubrick]

this showed at a local film festival but i didn't go cos you guys never mentioned it.

[JG]

i saw the trailer for this before Good Night and Good Luck and thought it was the trailer for Munich 

haha me 2.  i caught on about a minute in though

[Gamblour.]

I saw this tonight. I agree with Ravi basically. The film had a good pace and promise for maybe Malick-type reflection on the poetics of suicide bombing, but never went there, it went into some plot about Khaled looking for and not finding Said, which feels pointless. The female lead is gorgeous, as are the male actors (if I can say that without neon saying I'm gay, but I feel I can concede their attractiveness). I really liked how it humanized the two men before showing them gear up for the suicide bombing. there was almost no trepidation at first, it was very matter-of-fact that these were the next guys to go. and that contradiction between that "monster" and the people we see them as is jarring, only slightly however. It's a beautifully shot film, as well.

[Ravi]

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060102/SCANNERS/60103001

A Palestinian 'Munich'
Jim Emerson / January 2, 2006

I finally caught up with the fall 2005 release "Paradise Now" (written and directed by an Israeli-born Palestinian, Hani Abu-Assad), which I'd missed at the Toronto Film Festival. It's about two Palestinians on the West Bank who volunteer to be suicide bombers and then have moral (and religious and political) qualms about their mission. Yes, it's the Palestinian flip-side to "Munich" -- though not nearly as sophisticated a piece of filmmaking. (It's gorgeous to look at -- especially those hot, dry landscapes in anamorphic widescreen -- and quietly suspenseful, although it gets a bit speechy toward the end.)

And it got me to wondering: What would those who are criticizing Steven Spielberg's film for "moral relativism" have to say about this one? That it "humanizes" suicide bombers (whom Political Correctness says one should never think of as human -- just as their demonization and objectification of their victims makes it possible for them, and other mass murderers, to do what they do)? Spielberg's movie "humanizes" Israeli counter-terrorist assassins, after all. Like the Palestinian killers in "Paradise Now," they begin to question the (moral, political, tactical) rightness and righteousness of their assigned task -- though they never for a moment doubt their cause. (OK, we can't expect everyone to allow that distinction, but it exists whether they like it or not.)

So, if you have two peoples at war, and you show that persons on both sides have doubts about the efficacy and morality of how they are being asked to fight that war, is that "moral relativism"? Or are both expressing a concern with morality? "Munich" and "Paradise Now" would make a provocative double-bill, particularly because: a) both films are tense political thrillers; and b) both overtly address the same issues and raise surprisingly similar questions about the cycle of violence in the Middle East.

I've already written a number of things here (and here) about what I think "Munich" is up to. Now, here are a couple excerpts (transcribed from the subtitles) from "Paradise Now" that directly address the conflict from the other side of The Fence, as it were. The conclusion I draw -- and the one I began to draw around the time the second intifada began, after Ariel Sharon irresponsibly provoked violence (by handing his enemies the very excuse to attack that they had desired) with this cynical show of visiting the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque during a volatile time in the fall of 2000 -- is that the seemingly endless quagmire of finger-pointing, reprisals and counter-reprisals between Israelis and Palestinians stems from their perceptions of each other as irreconcilably different, and, paradoxically, too much alike: proud, stubborn, right, wronged, humiliated, strong, helpless, unloved, unpopular, righteous, angry, victimized.

This speech is given by one of the would-be bombers, Said (Kais Nashef), whose father was executed as an Israeli "collaborator" when he was ten years old:

    A life without dignity is worthless. Especially when it reminds you, day after day, of humiliation and weakness. And the world watches, cowardly, indifferently. If you're all alone, faced with this oppression, you have to find a way to stop the injustice. They must understand that if there's no security for us, there'll be none for them, either. It's not about power. Their power doesn't help them. I tried to deliver this message to them, but I couldn't find another way.

    Even worse, they've convinced the world, and themselves, that they are the victims. How can that be? How can the occupier be the victim? If they take on the role of oppressor and victim, then I have no other choice but to also be a victim, and a murderer as well.

That second paragraph goes to the heart of the matter. Who gets to claim the crowning role of victim is essential to the perceptions that drive this particular war -- and maybe even the key to winning it. (As it is in the "War on Terrorism," where America and Islamists simultaneously claim both roles as victim and avenger -- and are cast as victimizers by their enemies.) For the "moral equivalency" crowd, It's not OK to see both sides as victims and victimizers and move on from there; they insist only one side can have anything resembling morality. Problem is, the status of "victim" largely depends on where you start keeping score (BCE? 1840? 1917? 1919? 1920? 1937? 1946? 1948? 1967? 1972?). Is there any way out of this closed loop, or (as some once thought of the Cold War) is it essential and inevitable that one side must simply obliterate all who sympathize with the enemy? Or do they both need to obliterate each other, perhaps?

Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "Paradise Now": "Said articulates the Palestinian position, expressing anger that the Israelis have stolen the status of victims he believes belongs by right to his own people. Does this speech make the film propaganda, or does it function simply as a record of what such a man would say on such an occasion? I'm not sure it matters. If we are interested in a film that takes us into the lives of suicide bombers, we must be prepared to regard what we find there. Certainly what Said says will not come as a surprise to any Israeli. It's simply that they disagree.

"We may disagree, too, and yet watch the film with a fearsome fascination.... The director is himself a Palestinian, born in Israel; his crew included Palestinians, Israelis and Westerners, and during the filming was reportedly threatened by both sides in the conflict. It hardly matters, in a way, which side Abu-Assad's protagonists are on; the film is dangerous because of its objectivity, its dispassionate attention to the actual practical process by which volunteers are trained and prepared for the act of destruction."

Indeed, one could say many similar things about "Munich."

This next exchange takes place between Suha (Lubna Azabal), the daughter of a famous Palestinian martyr, and Khaled (Ali Suliman), the other of the assigned suicide bombers, who sees death not only as his escape from an intolerable situation (he's been promised he and Said will be met by two angels immediately after blowing themselves and their victims to bits), but also as the Great Equalizer:

    Suha: Why are you doing this?

    Khaled: If we can't live as equals, at least we'll die as equals.

    S: If you can kill and die for equality, you should be able to find a way to be equal in life.... Then at least the Israelis don't have an alibi to keep on killing.

    K: Don't be so naive. There can be no freedom without struggle. As long as there is injustice, someone must make a sacrifice!

    S: That's no sacrifice, that's revenge! If you kill, there's no difference between victim and occupier.

    K: If we had airplanes, we wouldn't need martyrs. That's the difference.

    S: The difference is that the Israeli military is still stronger.

    K: Then let us be equal in death. We still have Paradise.

    S: There is no Paradise. It only exists in your head!

    K: God forbid! May God forgive you.... Anyway, I'd rather have Paradise in my head than live in this hell! In this life, we're dead anyway. One only chooses bitterness when the alternative is even bitterer.

    S: And what about us? The ones who remain? Will we win that way? Don't you see that what you're doing is destroying us? And that you give Israel an alibi to carry on?

    K: So, with no alibi, Israel will stop?

    S: Perhaps. We have to turn it into a moral war.

    K: How, if Israel has no morals?

This sounds so much like a theoretical argument between a liberal (Saleh) and an Islamist (Khaled) -- or, seen another way, between a liberal (Saleh) and a neo-con (Khaled) -- after 9/11 that it's scary.

The right-wing political critics of "Munich" have claimed that they (and, by extension, Israel) have the indisputable moral high ground. And yet they see no conflict when their arguments, and their tactics, come to resemble those of the enemy they see as the embodiment of pure evil and immorality. Are they all eyeless in Gaza? (Shout out to Sampson, the first "suicide bomber" -- without bombs -- against the Philistines.) Or is there none so blind as he who will not see? Oh, sorry. It's not PC to ask such questions anymore. We're Good. They're Evil (that's what makes them Them). That's all we need to trouble our little heads with now.