Paradise Now

Some people can consider Paradise Now as propaganda, however, in my humble opinion, this movie is much more than a story about the situation in Palestine. It's a movie that shows how human beings can do horrible things when they are oppressed and how this behavior even seem to make sense when you're taught from the childhood that doing such things is the only way to get freedom.

It's obvious that suicide bombers are murderers, but it's also obvious that they are victims from Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, USA and everyone that gets profits with the violence in the Middle East, so this movie wasn't special to me for showing some kind of sympathy for terrorism if it does. The role of this movie for me was to show a humanized version of a group of people that I usually only take acknowledge by the TV as people whose only objective is to kill the highest possible amount of people.

Here in Brazil we don't have ethnic or religious wars. Here, Palestinians and Jews live sometimes in the same neighborhood and there's never been a terrorist attack. On the other hand, we've got extremely serious problems with violence caused by the oppression that poor people suffer from the Police, that seems only to exist to protect the rich. In May, a criminal organization called PCC (Capital's First Command) attacked more than a hundred of places (most Police stations) in São Paulo, killing approximately one hundred people.

Are these criminals originally bad or their acts are just the consequence of an extremely unequal society? Well, on the TV we only see the criminals and the terrorists, but thank God we have movies like City of God, Carandiru and Paradise Now to show us the human beings.

I thought this was a very powerful and well-made film. The acting was excellent, as are the script, direction, and cinematography. Perhaps the biggest challenge with a film on such a controversial topic is what position it takes, but as a moderate American Jew, I felt it took as objective a position as possible. It does not push one side or another, but merely tells one story about two men chosen for a suicide bombing mission. I was concerned there might be an attempt to get the viewer to sympathize with the would-be bombers, but did not find that to be the case. Ultimately, the story leads you to sympathize with the families and friends of these men, demonizes those who have led them down this path, and simply humanizes the men themselves. There have been some criticisms of the film for focusing too much on Palestinians and essentially reducing the Israelis in the film to background and setting, but I think this was necessary. This is not a documentary about suicide bombings; it is the story of two of the suicide bombers themselves.

After watching "Paradise Now" and reading the reviews on this site, I had to ask myself whether those who hated this film saw the same movie I did. It is entirely possible to watch this film and not side with the two protagonists. Why? Oh, I don't know, it's called having a rational, open mind.

I never got the impression that the filmmakers were celebrating suicide bombers or condoning the actions of their two protagonists. What director Hany Abu-Assad attempts to do - and does it rather successfully - is show us the thought process that happens when people decide to do the unspeakable. We might not agree with the decision - at least, I certainly hope we don't - and we should be repulsed by what's happening. But the unmistakable truth is that these people exist and, whether we like to admit it or not, they firmly believe in what they're doing.

Being objective, or trying to be, and humanizing people like Said and Khaled in the film isn't necessarily bad. I realize it's awfully easy for our leaders to simply brand them as monsters and "evildoers" and see the world in purely as good and evil, a world without complexities, subtleties and contradictions. It makes them feel good to spoon feed us trite sound bites and most of us seem to be quite willing to accept their mindless platitudes, phrases and talking points without debate or even an iota of skepticism.

But when you humanize these characters, it makes them more terrifying. We realize they're not rabid monsters we can't know and understand. It makes what they do all that more alarming. When Bruno Ganz humanized Hitler in "Downfall" (2004), he didn't make Hitler any less evil; he just made us realize that a human being could be that horrible and, therefore, his actions were all the more despicable and frightening.

The American public - as much as it might not want to admit it - needs to be educated and learn about what makes people like Said, Khaled and their comrades tick. It's too myopic (and ultimately unproductive) for us to simply toss them aside as evil. Our ignorance of foreign cultures and religions, especially Arab and Islam, is staggering. The media must share some of the blame. TV networks are more concerned about young, white women missing than foreign affairs. World news in this country essentially is limited to the goings-on Iraq. That, too, barely penetrates the surface. Not when you have to cut to breaking news of a new "development" in Aruba or the latest on Brad and Angelina. Afghanistan barely gets mentioned anymore, even though the Taliban seems to be gaining strength in several parts again. (Then again, even the Bush administration seems to have forgotten about that place.) And then networks have the audacity to put on talking-heads to pontificate on shows headlined, "Why they hate us."

"Paradise Now" never asks us to support what the characters are doing. In fact, it provides a counterbalance to the characters by giving us a Palestinian woman who sees the futility in this enterprise. The film also never glorifies what these people are doing. It show us, and there's no implied endorsement of their actions. The acting is uniformly good and, above all, convincing. We may not agree with the subject matter and we should find the characters' actions loathsome. But that doesn't mean we simply brand the film as irresponsible.

This is the world we live in, whether we like it or not. And we owe it to ourselves to learn and comprehend how the other side thinks. What they believe and why they do. Doesn't mean we have to like it. But we sure need to understand it.

PARADISE NOW opens windows of information to those of us who do not live in the Middle East and who toil over understanding the strife that daily bitterly continues, bruising the lives of both ends of the polarity that separates the peoples of the region. Are there ever to be answers or solutions to the crises? For this viewer watching and absorbing PARADISE NOW is illuminating in that it removes the expected political preaching to focus on the minds of the people living under the daily stress of life at its most difficult. Taking us there, making ideas into people with all the convictions and rebelliousness and fragility, writer/director Hany Abu-Assad (with Bero Beyer) offers invaluable insights and in the end we are left with a story about humanity and the consequences of decisions, and the desperate need for peace.

Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are childhood friends in Palestine who have been elected to be suicide bombers in an attack on Tel Aviv. Their election to be martyrs for the destruction of the 'invaders' is considered an honor: their deaths will bring glory to their country, their families, and guarantee them instant entry into heaven. We see the two men as citizens living in the dusty hovels, facing barricades and checkpoints that make their lives ones of constant stress. Martyrdom will bring them peace and eternal rest. The entire process of preparing the elected martyrs, from making farewell videotapes for their parents, to having their hair cut short, to having the bombs strapped to their bodies, to dressing them in black suits for the 'wedding' they are instructed to claim to attend in Tel Aviv, to sending them off at the designated spot is relentlessly filmed. Said and Khaled accept their roles although with varying degrees of emotional commitment. At the point where the lads are to begin their martyrdom venture they are separated and the story is how each continues living, each now alone.

The families and the perpetrators of the scheme are well drawn by a strong cast, with one female role Suha (Lubna Azabal) as a voice of reason and peace standing out particularly strongly. The sensitivity of the actors Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman keeps this drama from sinking into politicism and instead allows us to understand the inner turmoil of the two men they portray as they cope with their duties and their lives.This is a powerful document that serves as a plea for peace wherever terrorism is a factor - and now that is global. If more of us could watch and absorb films such as PARADISE NOW perhaps the itinerant boundaries separating mankind by misunderstanding could be reduced without the need for war. Highly Recommended. In Arabic with English subtitles. Grady Harp

If I were to tell you that Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now is about two suicide bombers, you'd probably wince a little. However, if I told you that the film was a humanization of two Palestinian men planning to conduct a suicide attack on Israel and that the film paints a respectable portrait of the moral and human complexities involved in such an extreme plan, I'd hope you'd think twice. The film concerns Said and Khaled (Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman), two lifelong friends living in Nablus, working rote jobs as mechanics and passing their time by discussing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over hookah. The two are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and go about their daily lives, maintaining as much normalcy as they can in public until they comfortable hide away in a secret hideout with numerous other Palestinian extremists, carrying out their plans of action. These involve complex, down-to-the-minute plans being orchestrated along with the creation and promotion of videos glorifying and praising Allah in the midst of orchestrating these attacks.

A key humanization comes during the filming of the video glorifying Allah. Said stands tall, hoisting a rifle and talking about his loyalty to Allah and the message he brings. After one take, the director discovers the video didn't record properly, so they're forced to set up and do it again. Another technical-difficulty occurs during the second taping before the third taping gets it right on the money. Following the director's demand to "cut," Said yells upstairs to his mother that he found water filters cheaper at a place they normally don't go to.

Such dialog seems trite and padded, but writers Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, and Pierre Hodgson include these kind of things as a reminder that these suicide bombers are, one, indeed human, two, have families, and three, don't always operate with the kind of breakneck sophistication that we see dramatized on Television shows and Hollywood movies. Mainstream American cinema has had us quietly conditioned to think that everyone in the Middle East is an enemy that possesses enough power and wit to take down America and all its people, almost encouraging us to sleep with one eye open. Abu-Assad, in an act of deviance, shows us the kind of amateur setups these operations often are and the humanity of the characters that are involved with these sort of incidents.

In all the glorification, the frenzied reports, and the fear-mongering in America that concerns the Middle East, America's war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the proclaimed War on Terror, Paradise Now is a refreshing and necessary watch to at least give us a more realistic view on how these operations can be conducted. It's rare we see characters like terrorists and suicide bombers drawn in multiple layers, if even presented as characters at all, so the fact that Nashef and Suliman's characters are given names and personalities is a huge step in a progressive direction. The bravery to make a film like this and rise above all the nonsense was a bold feat on part of Abu-Assad and his crew, who had to jump through several hoops to get this film made.

From attacks on the set, to interference from actual protest, to threats of censorship from the Israeli government, Paradise Now was in production in the 1990's, but repeated incidents of drama and danger prevented its completion until 2005. Following its release, it became the first Palestinian film to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, deservingly so. In response, Abu-Assad made probably one of the best comments that could've been made about the film's recognition, saying, "the politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing," reminding people that, at the end of the day, these are human lives we're talking about on both ends of the spectrum and that fact should never be lost despite being amidst a wealth of oversimplifications.

Starring: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, and Hiam Abbass. Directed by: Hany Abu-Assad.