Paradise Now - A Two Day Vignette - Interesting, Informative, and Compelling

It’s not a movie that will make you cry or one that makes you completely sympathize with its complicated characters, but make not mistake about it, Paradise Now is powerful. The impact of the film exists in the fact this it provides a vignette taking place over two days into the lives of two lifelong Palestinian friends living in the West Bank who have been chosen to carry out a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. What is special about this window into their lives is that it is completely an insular discussion and conversation that happens. We see only the internal debate regarding suicide bombing with no outside perspectives. It is interesting because as we think about what motivates suicide bombers, it is really that internal debate that happens that ends up making the difference. For those who choose to bomb, the perspectives of those viewed as outsiders or the enemy do not matter; the perspectives of the people in their community do.

What seems to be the unifying theme is the Israeli settler as an evil, overbearing and immoral oppressive force that must be stopped. Yet the three character arch-types, while connected in this, nonetheless, are very different. Jamal is tied in with the political movement, those who propagate the political rhetoric to supplement the disdain of Israeli settlers. He is who first informs Said, one of the two “protagonists” of the film, that he has been selected to carry out a suicide mission. He himself, we can assume, will never have to commit this kind of mortal sacrifice. Said’s character is determined to carry out his bombing mission, though with some reservations. We learn that the motive for him, the tipping point, was when Israelis induced his father into becoming an informant. He has lived with that family shame his entire life, and he views his suicide mission as an act of both revenge and redemption. His motives in this sense are very personal and emanate less from Palestinian resistance at the community level. Suha, played by Lubna Azabal with beauty and brilliance, is a Palestinian who group up outside of the region and only recently moved back. Her father exploded himself when she was still very young and is now a legend in their town. But she does not celebrate this act. She provides the voice for those whom bombers leave behind. They must deal with the loss and even greater, the consequences of Israeli retaliation. She argues that their struggle must be a moral one and that bombing will never succeed because of the power asymmetry that necessitates smarter tactics.

The most alarming part of the movie is that when it begins and we first see the film’s protagonists, there is no indication that the next day they might become suicide bombers. The transition happens with the snap of a finger. One moment they are living out what they conclude to be helpless and worthless lives, and the next moment they find something that gives their lives meaning and purpose. They are ad hoc fanatics more than anything else. We don’t see them espousing long tirades about Israel and we don’t here them preaching in the streets that the Jews must be pushed into the seas. No, until they are selected as suicide bombers, we see them as ordinary people. This is quite discomforting because the suggestion is that the ones carrying out the attacks are quite ordinary in everything except this one act. And just like for Said, they all have their tipping point. Said quite possibly would have never chosen to become a suicide bomber but for his father’s informing.

The film only gives two glimpses of Israelis, and they are not the demonized settlers. We see soldiers manning a checkpoint, but this is only meant to provide the backdrop of the power imbalance and physical aesthetic assault Palestinians must endure daily. The other glimpse happens when Said is sitting on a bus, contemplating exploding himself there though it is not his target. Here are the Israelis we see most intimately and they are not the demonized settlers. They are not the politicians. They are not the soldiers. They are simply very ordinary people living out their daily lives. The parallels of them to our first glimpses of Said and Khaled are striking. What makes these Israelis even more sympathetic is that they sit there completely oblivious to what potentially might occur just at any moment. In addition, we know nothing about them, we have only their faces, and so we are forced to imagine who they are. Are they married? Do they have any children? A cat perhaps? What is their profession? It humanizes them on a very individual and personal level as our forced imagining of them connects us to them.

From the beginning, the suicide mission is not a sure thing and the movie keeps you on edge with the possibility that Said and Khaled will not carry out their mission. The film’s strength lies in the presentation of the closed discussion that happens in their community. If we accept that a certain small segment of a population (Bin Laden for instance) are unreachable and will be extremists no matter what, surely our mission must be to then understand that other subset of a population that is ordinary but for some reason is driven at some point to terrorism. When the Bush Administration speaks of winning hearts and minds, these are to whom they should be referring. To the extent also this film helps us to understand the voices in a community, we can then select more intelligently those voices within who preach practicality and find inventive ways to support them. At the end of the day, we need these internal voices to ring loud and reverberate through the souls of a community. That will be a key component to progress in the struggle for peace. A nice bookend to Paradise Now would be this same film, but in the Israeli community. Let us here the internal debate that happens there to the exclusion of commentary from the Arab world, Europe or the U.S. It would make for an equally compelling and equally interesting movie.