For a film made by a Palestinian about the last few hours in the life of a suicide bomber, Paradise Now is careful not to glorify its subject. Nazareth-born director Hany Abu-Assad has spent most of his career producing political documentaries (Ford Transit, Nazareth 2000) and this is only his second foray into drama (the first being Rana's Wedding/Al Qods Fee Yom Akhar). But this is what defines him, and he uses not only his nationality as a spear to pierce the heart of the film's narrative but also his documentary experience to make this drama play out like a real-life story.
Khaled (Suliman) and Saïd (Nashef) are two Palestinians who pass their time working together as mechanics and taking crap from irate customers. Saïd is approached by Jamal who asks him to carry out the next mission for an unnamed Palestinian organisation. Childhood friends, Khaled and Saïd have agreed to do this together, and so begins the countdown to what should be the last hours of their lives. After delivering their suicide video message and being strapped with explosives, they cross the Israeli border, but get separated. An old friend of Saïd's, Suha (Azabal), has argued with him about the conflict and her words feed doubt into Khaled's mind about their mission. Saïd's conviction remains resolute, with devastating consequences.
Abu Assad has set his film from a powerful viewpoint, that of two committed suicide bombers. Their lives are portrayed as so suppressed, “death is better than inferiority”, “if you're not afraid of death you're in control of your life”, that they need to take part in an extreme act in order to make it meaningful. Under occupation they feel they are already dead, at least this way they will be remembered as heroes and be with God. Abu-Assad follows many other male Palestinian filmmakers in using a female character, in this case Suha, to provide the opposing argument, to question the ethics of war as opposed to dialogue, and as a reminder of who is left behind to grieve and continue suffering.
Paradise Now opens with a nod to the don of Palestinian filmmaking Elia Sulieman in a scene reminiscent from his film Divine Intervention. A woman in sunglasses strides purposefully towards an armed Israeli checkpoint, the camera cutting between her sunglasses and the eyes of the soldiers. In Paradise Now 's more realistic staging she compliantly hands over her passport, rather than cause the collapse of a checkpoint watchtower. From here the film includes familiar Palestinian film footprints like the problems of moving borders, suddenly closed roads, curfews and intense arguments over minor things (like a car bumper).
Much like Jewish director Spielberg's Munich about the killing of Israeli athletes concentrates on the perspective of the Israelis at the expense of the Arab, so Paradise Now focuses exclusively on Palestinian characters. Whilst both films are careful not to condone the futility of tit-for-tat killings and blindly executed assassinations, they give oxygen to their own side. This is understandable, but in the case of Paradise Now it comes as part of an as yet still burgeoning canon: the Palestinian Cinema. Whilst Spielberg has only to add his name to green-light a multi-million dollar budget, Abu-Assad has to deal with obstacles untapped by most filmmakers.
The film's production is almost a story in itself. Comprising a crew from Palestine , The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Israel and the UK, filming took place in Nablus, Nazareth and Tel Aviv. Unlike many film crews and more akin to news crews, they found themselves subject to missile attacks, their location manager was kidnapped, they were ordered at gunpoint to leave Nablus (six of the crew decided to leave the country completely), and saw a landmine explode nearby at which point Lubna Azabal fainted. When filming the suicide bombers' goodbye video messages the crew were surrounded off-camera by men who had ordered these videos to be made for real. Much to Abu-Assad's relief they weren't concerned about the humour he'd injected, but only that Ali Suliman wasn't holding his machine gun (one of theirs) properly.
Paradise Now does not glorify suicide bombers, but it does sympathise with young men like Khaled and Saïd who feel utterly dispossessed and impotent in light of Israeli occupation and intimidation. The real villains seem to be the organisers of the suicide missions, who recruit vulnerable targets and sleep soundly at night whilst their foot soldiers toss and turn.
The film is released under Warner Independent Pictures which also gives us Good Night, and Good Luck. and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (after Sony backtracked due to the word Muslim in the title say the film's producers), and uses a predominantly inexperienced cast, including the two leads who are exceptional in first time roles, ably shouldering the emotional and political weight their parts carry.
Paradise Now is a thoughtful and deliberately shocking film about a subject that hasn't been explored in dramatic film before, and is also the first Palestinian film to be made with Israeli funding. Its impact has been widespread, with the result that it's been nominated for an Oscar (for best foreign language film). It marks an impressive and positive progression for the Palestinian film industry, which with the talent of directors like Abu-Assad continues to grow from strength to strength. |
