Rating:

We follow them and their escorts as they have a final night with their families. Said slips away to return her car keys to Suha; who invites him in and they spend the night talking and debating how to fight the occupation, Said from the perspective of living his whole life in the West Bank, Suha having returned from a life abroad to pursue non-violent resistance. The two martyrs then spend a day getting ready, fitted with suits, shaved and haircut, strapped with explosives and given their plan. They slip across the border, but something goes awry (through betrayal or just bad luck). Khaled rejoins with Jamal and the rest but Said is separated.

Jamal’s group, fearing that Said is the traitor, abandons the house they had used for preparation, and an intense day is spent until Said and Khaled reconnect, involving Suha in the search. The two debate the wisdom of their course, with themselves, with each other and with Suha. As an altered plan is devised, and they take off again for their target, we are left wondering until near the very end (and even the end could be seen as ambiguous) who will back out and who will go through with the attack.

Although there is plenty of action and intrigue, it is subdued and realistic (not hypertrophied Hollywood style), and the focus is more the lives and thoughts of the characters. Not mindless religious fanatics, they are full of nuance and doubt, with views and actions stemming from their personal histories, and the three main characters — Said, Khaled and Suha — are eloquent and sincere in their debates. Kais Nashef as Said and Ali Suliman as Khaled are excellent and convincing, but the standout is Lubna Azabal as a fiery, determined Suha.

Many will object to any attempt to put a human face on what they see as irredeemably loathesome, but understanding need not be seen as forgiveness or approval. Though certainly sympathetic with the situation of the Palestinians, there is little if any demonization of the Israelis, either through action (the closest to atrocity or brutality is the sinister stare of the checkpoint guard as Suha’s suitcase is inspected at the beginning of the film) nor in dialogue. This film should give pause for thought regardless of one’s views on Middle East politics.

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Ironically, Saeed means happy in Arabic.

While I spent time in occupied territories, I could always tell the difference between the locals and the foreigners. The ones the grew up there and the ones that were visiting. The local ones rarely, if ever smiled. The ones visiting from abroad smiled liberally, when greeting you, when saying goodbye, when talking about something funny and for no reason at all.

Then we meet Suha, she smiles lots. Guess what? … she grew up in France. People are nice to her because she is the daughter of a martyr and a hero, also she is cute.

In a Hollywood movie, Suha would make Saeed smile by the end of the movie, at one point you think that surly the movie is going in that direction.

So many similarities with a Hollywood movie

There is a cute leading female.

Two guys dressed in a black suits, which reminded me of the Men In Black movie and the Blues Brothers movie.

Suspense.

One quarter into the movie the suspense was so high, that my friend who came to see the movie with me looked like she couldn’t take it. I offered to hold her hand. For about five minutes we both forgot about the north American rule that females are not supposed to hold hands in public and behaved like we would in the middle east despite the fact that my friend is not middle eastern, we held hands. She looked at me and whispered, you must find this even more distressing than I do, I nodded with my head to say that I am ok. I wanted to tell her that everything in this movie is familiar, the language, the mentality, the way people talk, I have seen it all before, only in real life. It must be distressing to be exposed to all this within 15 minutes.

My favorite scene in the Blues Brothers is when they are going around looking for the other members of their band. They knock on a door and a lady with hair curlers opens the doors. She looks at the two men wearing black suits and asks them

lady in hair curlers: Are you guys with the FBI?

Blues Brothers: No Ma’am. We are on a mission from God. We are musicians.

That scene cracks me up each time I see it.

Saeed and his friend are not sure if they are on a mission from god or not. When they discuss the nature of their mission, they don’t seem sure if god is behind it or not. You wish they were religious crazy fanatics on a mission from god …… that is the lie that we have been told in western media, time and again ….. surprise! …… they are not. Religion plays a role ….. but a very small role in the events that are about to take place.

Paradise Now is not a Hollywood movie

No happy ending

No violence

No car chase scene

No sex

One small brief episode of swearing and it is very brief indeed

As I watched the movie, I wished I could have reach out to Saeed to shake his shoulder. I wished I could tell him, “Saeed! you are young and beautiful, your whole life is ahead of you, don’t throw it away”. Suha tries hard to play the audience’s voice in that movie. She even speaks Arabic with a funny accent to mark her foreignness and out-sidedness. She is treated with polite decorum, but nothing she says seems to address the realities on the ground. She is there in person, but far removed at the same time.

When the movie ended there was complete silence in the whole movie theater. You could have heard a pin drop. In most movies, you can hear the tidbits of conversation about the movie as you walk out. Again, as we walked out, there was complete and stunned silence. Nobody was saying anything, not even to their mobile phone. Everybody was completely and utterly stunned by the movie and so overwhelmed with what they just saw they were speechless.

In short, absolutely brilliant. If you are planning to see it, prepare to see a truly thought provoking movie that will rock your world.

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Two young Palestinian men are called to honor their pledge to become suicide bombers. The movie depicts the squalidness of life in Israeli-occupied Palestine, the careful ritual of their preparation to die, the conflicting moments of doubt and certainty of the two men, and their journey to the location at which they will perform their act of protest. Perhaps the most effective scene in the movie shows them amidst the urban delights of Tel Aviv, so vastly different from the life they lead in a shabby ghetto only a few miles away. The only possible false note for me in the movie was the suggestion of Israeli collaborators with the suicide bombers. Is that plausible? I don’t know.

The counterpoint to the suicide bombers is Suha, a young, sophisticated, and very appealing woman who argues eloquently against the rationale of suicide bombing. This is powerful stuff, unsullied by cheap propaganda, easy answers, or cinematic tricks. That the movie portrays the Palestinians in a sympathetic light could, I suppose, in the eyes of some be propagandistic. However, my cynical eye accepted the characterizations as credible.

“Paradise Now” is of Oscar quality for its originality, depth, and relevance.

Rating:

In reality this movie does not glorify or demonize the two main characters. The central message of the movie is one of peace as transmitted through the only glorified character in the movie: the rational Suha who only wants peace. The film accurately depicts the state of utter desolation and poverty that Palestinians are living in today. I believe the movie is a great device whose purpose is to give the world another viewpoint on the psychology of many Palestinians and why suicide bombers exist at all.