My Review of "Paradise Now"

This afternoon I watched director Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now". We had watched short clips of this in class, but watching the entire film was a much more meaningful experience. The movie did an excellent job of depicting a perspective we rarely hear about in the American media. It is a story of two best friends, Said and Khaled, who decide to sacrifice their lives as suicide bombers in resistance to the occupation of their downtrodden Palestinian hometown of Nablus.

The imagery of the film is very powerful, and serves as an effective means of communicating the hopelessness both men feel. In one scene, they stare out into the desolate vastness of their city. They are stuck in hell; Nablus is a crumbling city home to a crumbling people. Violence is an everyday occurence, and with very little economic opportunities available, Sayid and Khaled are easily swayed by promises of prosperity and immortality in the afterlife. Khaled justifies their decision to become a suicide bomber by saying, "in this life, we're dead anyways".

But are they? The movie hints that there are things to live for, even in the most hopeless of situations. There is laughter, family, and love, even in the lives of would-be suicide bombers. The movie lets the audience dwell on the multi-dimensional layers of relationships that Sayid and Khaled have with the people around them. Many of those who love the two men have no idea of their intentions, and this tension is difficult to watch. As much as this is a story of young men (or "boys", as they are often referred), the role Palestinian women play is equally, if not more important.

The women in the storyline are often burdened with the consequences of the actions of rash men. Suha, Sayid's love interest, knows this all too well. She lost her father, who others proclaim as a hero, to the struggle against Israel. Sayid's mother knows loss intimately as well; she lost here husband to an execution, and at the end she loses her son too.

Even though one of the men "comes to their senses" so to speak, the story is still a bleak one. Khaled remains alive, but without his best friend. It took more bravery to abort their mission than go through with it. The living have to bear the weight of what the dead left behind.

The fact that the movie never makes a firm ideological stand makes it even more powerful, in my mind. The Israel-Palestine conflict is tragically complex, and the violence is predictably cyclical. The result: innocent people on both sides become victims of its collateral damage. When will it stop?