Troubling 'Paradise'
Inside the mind of a suicide bomber, things may not be as crazy as they seem
By Andy Klein
Talk about your (seemingly) unlikely releases! Warner Independent is opening a film from director Hany Abu-Assad, Paradise Now, whose protagonists are Palestinian suicide bombers. It's hard to imagine this not pissing off a few groups, so let's start out by stipulating that the movie is, rather clearly, opposed to suicide bombings ... indeed, to violence in general. Its central thrust is to illuminate how more or less average guys - albeit average Palestinian guys living in the West Bank - could come to find this form of terrorism admirable.
Kais Nashif stars as Saïd, a thirtyish auto mechanic, who lives with his mother (Hiam Abbass) and siblings in Nablus, one of the largest West Bank cities. Unlike his impatient best friend, Khaled (Ali Suliman), he's responsible and hard-working. He also seems to be having the beginnings of a romantic spark with Suha (Lubna Azabal), a college graduate from a much more privileged background, who was born in France and raised in Morocco and therefore has a much different emotional connection to Palestinian aspirations.
But one day, Saïd and Khaled are approached by their friend Jamal (Amer Hlehel) and given the good news: The unnamed underground organization he belongs to has chosen them to carry out its first suicide bombing in Israel after a long period of lying low. In a reasonable world, they'd run in the other direction, but they are in fact overjoyed.
Wired with explosives that can't be removed safely without a special code, they sneak through a break in the fence around the Palestinian territories, but there is a foul-up. Khaled escapes back to the organization headquarters, while Saïd wanders around on both sides of the fence - perhaps metaphorically as well, since he seems to be on the fence about whether to attempt to complete his mission. Much of the rest of the film intercuts between Saïd's ramblings and Khaled's (later Suha's), desperate attempts to locate him.
The second half of the film works up quite a bit of suspense on a number of fronts. Will Saïd carry out his mission? Will he be spotted by Israeli authorities? Will he be found by the underground organization, which now suspects him of having betrayed them? And, most of all, will he stretch to grab something off a high shelf, forgetting that he is wired to detonate with such a gesture?
Within this suspense-movie framework, the action occasionally slows down, as the characters explain their motivations or argue (a little didactically) about whether they're justified. Suha seems to represent the filmmakers' point of view, and surely she will be able to convince Saïd to oppose the occupation in some less dire manner.
Or maybe not.
Given the obvious difficulties of shooting on location - and being suspected by both Israelis and Palestinians of being pro-the-other-side - it's impressive how good the movie is technically. There are a few rough moments, but most of the time the widescreen images (shot by Antoine Heberlé) are nicely lit and composed, with plenty of urgent camera movement.
The actors are excellent, particularly Nashif and Abbass; the latter appears in only a few scenes with just a scattering of lines, but her extraordinary face remains burned into your memory.
If the film sounds grim, well, yes, it is dealing with heavy, difficult issues. But, with the exception of those didactic moments, it moves quickly. Amazingly, in addition to its success in creating suspense and debating issues, it is - I know this is hard to believe - not without some very effective humor. There may be nothing the least bit funny about what is arguably the most hopeless political conflict on the planet, but that doesn't stop the characters from being as comically human as the rest of us.
Published: 10/27/2005
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