Movie Review |
Martyrs' Off-Ramp: Paradise Nowby George Sax |
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The last brief, cross-cut, dialogue-free sequence in Paradise Now is the most chilling and morally disturbing of any in recent movies. Hany Abu-Asssad’s film builds toward this result in an increasingly tense process for almost ninety minutes, but these closing moments are startling and deeply disquieting, nevertheless.
His film follows the activities of two young Palestinians, would-be suicide bombers, over the course of two days as they prepare for this supremely self-sacrificial military mission against Israel. Paradise Now certainly works as a morally engaged political thriller. It also manages, remarkably enough, to render the protagonists and their occupied West Bank milieu humanely compelling. Whether the film’s depiction of the psychological and political rationales for these horrifying martyrs’ missions is effective enough is less certain.
Said and Khaled (Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman) are introduced to us as underemployed garage mechanics in Nablus, in the northern occupied territories. We’ve barely begun to distinguish them from one another before, at the close of their work day (and after Khalid, the more temperamental of the two, is fired), they’re informed by their secret control agent that their mission is scheduled for the next day.
Even this early in the film, it’s emotionally difficult to process this information. In other films—Hotel Rwanda, for example—there’s some preparation for the awful things that are about to ensue.
Said has just met and flirted with a young woman (Lubna Azabal) who has recently returned to the West Bank from abroad. Khaled, asked what he’ll do tomorrow, amiably replies that he might look for a new job.
Abu-Assad filmed in places where events like those in the movie actually occur. Indeed, he had to abandon work in Nablus and move to Nazareth because of dangerous conditions. (In one bleakly humorous and upsetting scene in which Khaled videotapes his martyr’s statement, the rifle he holds belongs to a Palestinian militant who watched from behind the camera.)
Abu-Assad has made it clear enough what his position on the suicide missions is, but his sympathies are also obvious enough, and his ability to reach some kind of artistic synthesis in this film may be open to some question.
Paradise Now has been made with a subtly controlled technique; the film’s careful restraint underscores the increasingly intense action. (The movie is never graphically violent.) Abu-Assad has employed a deceptively uncluttered method; he uses a lot of long takes and medium shots, and picks up the pace only incrementally for much of the film. Even without the uniquely difficult conditions in which it was made, the film would be impressive.
He hasn’t succeeded as well at integrating the political, moral and personal elements he wants us to consider. When Said explains himself and his motives near the end, his ethical insight doesn’t seem compatible with the intense resentment of his own and other Palestinians’ wretched conditions. Abu-Assad’s attempt to “reason” with us may be the least authentic aspect of his film.
Still, the movie reaches a level of fear and heartbreak that should earn it a larger American audience than it’s likely to attract.
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