Said (Kasi Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are two young Palestinian men living in Nablus, a city on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They scrape by working as car mechanics. Khaled seems to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy while Said is quieter and more thoughtful. One of their customers is Suha (Lubna Azabal), a young woman who speaks Arabic with an accent, having been born in France and brought up in Morocco and only just returned to live in Palestine. Her father was a leader and a martyr, thereby giving Suha special status.

One night, Said is approached by a recruiter who asks if he is ready for a very special mission. With barely a breath of hesitation, Said claims that he is. He is allowed to spend the night with his family; his recruiter, known to the family as a religious man, stays too. The next morning, Said takes leave of his mother who, like the rest of the family, knows nothing of the impending mission. Said follows the recruiter to a secret hideout where Khaled is waiting with others involved in the mission. Having been friends since childhood, the two had expressed their wish to die together, and so they have been recruited to go on this special mission together.

We see the rather pragmatic preparations for their mission, from a ritual cleansing and final feast to a video-taping of their last words, the latter so fraught with technical mishap that it plays like a black comedy. Then, at a pre-arranged time, they wait at the border for their contact from the other side. Their contact shows up, but so too does an Israeli patrol car, and the two friends are separated as they try to escape. While Khaled makes it back to the safety of the recruiter’s car, Said gets left behind.

The terrorists cancel their operation at once, but Khaled insists that Said would never betray them, and he is given a day to find his friend. The two keep missing one another, until Khaled finds Suha, who, having just spoken to Said, is full of misgivings. Her suspicions confirmed by Khaled, the two argue heatedly about the ramifications of suicide bombings. Suha is completely against the notion, as she feels it gives the Israelis an excuse to keep attacking them in retaliatory acts that perpetuate the never-ending cycle of violence. She argues for non-violent resistance, and ridicules the notion of murderers being allowed into Paradise, but in Khaled’s mind, it is the only way he can get even with the Israeli oppressors who make his life a daily, unceasing struggle, not just to stay alive, but to do so with dignity.

Said is finally found, and the two friends are given a chance to redeem themselves by carrying out the aborted mission. This time, Khaled is less certain of his resolve. Said, however, despite a growing attraction to Suha, is more determined than ever. To him, whose father was executed as a collaborator, every living day is an exercise in futility and humiliation. He feels that he’s living in a prison, and death, though bitter, is a better alternative when life itself is even more bitter.

Filmed on location in some of the world’s most dangerous places, Paradise Now is an extraordinary achievement in the history of filmmaking. Director and co-writer Hany Abu-Assad and his crew (which included Palestinians, Israelis, as well as westerners) braved landmines, gunmen, firefights and missile attacks, as well as threats from both the Israeli occupying forces and various Palestinian armed factions, literally risking their lives to complete the movie. At one point, the film’s location manager was kidnapped by a militant Palestinian group. Perhaps this is the only movie where the behind-the-scenes highlights are as thrilling as those onscreen.

There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding this movie, with people (especially those who haven’t watched it) claiming that it glorifies suicide bombers. Nothing can be further from the truth. What the writers have done is present the Palestinians’ point of view in an objective, non-judgmental, manner. If anything, I feel that Suha is the writers’ and director’s mouth-piece, in her call for non-violent opposition. Like Suha, Hany Abu-Assad is something of an outsider, born and raised outside Palestine, but with close ties to it.

A deserving winner of the 2005 Amnesty International award for Best Film, Paradise Now is both gripping and enlightening, offering insights into the minds of would-be terrorists in an attempt to understand (but not to justify) the circumstances and thought processes that culminate in the decision to carry out a monstrous act.

With impeccable acting all round (from, in some cases, novice actors), Paradise Now may go so far as to make some of its viewers think: ‘What if it were me in his shoes, living his prison-like life of grinding poverty and rank humiliation? What if my faith were the only thing that sustains me? Martyrdom, with its perks of having my family taken care of and a phenomenal after-life, might start to sound pretty good then.’ Well, perhaps not. Most people will not identify with Said and Khaled. But at least we get to see them as human beings, with families, a lousy job, a budding romance, and emotionally-charged reasons behind their decisions to cut short their young lives.

From the Crusades on, religious differences have been used to inflame citizens and soldiers alike, to egg them on to fight for more land and more power. Nothing much has changed—to this day, wars are waged by political and religious leaders inciting hatred in men who have little to live for.

The lives of men like Said and Khaled are expendable to the people who recruit and exploit them. They have been brainwashed by real terrorists who could not care less about religion except that it can be craftily misinterpreted to manipulate the masses. These expendable young men (and increasingly, young women) are fed dogma and tenets that are tantamount to a travesty of the true religion of Islam and would make the prophet Mohammed spin in his grave.

No-one could possibly be sympathetic to suicide bombers, whatever their circumstances or motivations, yet it’s important to make certain distinctions. The root of the problem lies not in these expendable foot soldiers or even in those who send them forth. It lies in the climate of deep despair and utter desperation that fosters the existence of people who would rather die than live and who gain hero status with martyrdom. This same climate also favours the rise of extreme factions whose leaders are hell-bent on all-out victory, achieved at all costs, with their own people deemed disposable weaponry and enemy civilians fair game.

And what engenders this climate, this profound state of hopelessness? Dispossession will do it. Take away a people’s land and you take away their dignity and their livelihood. Stack the odds against them so that a fair fight is not an option, and passive resistance will turn active, hatred will out, and innocents, on both sides, will die. When there is nothing worth living for, death is not to be feared but to be embraced. The dispossessed might be forgiven for confusing sacrifice with revenge.

For those who took the time to watch Munich, be sure to watch Paradise Now to get the other side’s point of view.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older