Trouble In PARADISE

PARADISE NOW (Hany Abu-Assad, France / Germany / Netherlands / Israel, 2005, HR)

For those who follow film and the filmmaking industry, the Academy Awards are a point of orientation. it's not so much the awards themselves that matter, but the awards season gives cineastes a time to reflect, to make sense of the year that's come and gone in cinema, and to anticipate what the future will bring. This year, most of the buzz has focused on the dominance of political and social "message" films in the Best Picture category. Name a hot-button issue--race (CRASH), homosexuality (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, and to a lesser extent CAPOTE), the Middle East (MUNICH), or those rascally Republicans (GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK)--and the Oscars have a Hollywood-approved opinion waiting for you. Less interesting to casual observers, but perhaps more significant in terms of the future of the film industry, is the dominance of independent films among this year's slate of nominees--only MUNICH is a child of the major studios. And playing as a sort of sideshow to these stories (and to the usual banter about how will win, who should win, and runway fashion trends) is the strange tale of PARADISE NOW, a film seen by next to no one in the United States, a nominee for the Best Foreign Film statuette, and, if you ask the right people, a grossly offensive political statement.

From the very first frame, PARADISE NOW works with a dire urgency. It's palpable in the face of a woman (who we later learn is named Suha) making her way through a security checkpoint in Gaza, her alert, expressive face a symbol of stoic bravery in times of fear and uncertainty. Abu-Assad and his crew went to the trouble of shooting significant portions of the film in the Gaza Strip, where they were quite literally in the line of fire, and the realism of the setting along with the no-frills filmmaking (there's little music, and very little was done to ornament the stunning environs) gives PARADISE NOW an authenticity that cannot be bought for any price. The girl is a friend of two disaffected Palestinan men, Said and Khaled, who seem to have little purpose in life beyond fixing cars and smoking hookahs until they are called upon to execute a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. The film explores the emotional and psychological tension that must accompany a decision to give one's life for a cause with a quiet tact, focusing on body language, voice inflection, and above all the eyes (not that there's VERTIGO-like eye closeups, but I found myself drawn into them naturally). One would think the tension of sudden separation from family and the eerie details of preparing for a suicide mission would provide enough suspense, but the writers insisted on convoluted plot-twists that stretch the film out but don't really add anything interesting. The middle of film feels like an intermission to a moving introduction and a spellbinding conclusion that, for a fleeting moment, transports us from a seat in a theatre to a seat on a bus, our thumb sweating over a button that marks the line between life and death.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for a film about suicide bombers told from their perspective, activists groups have been protesting PARADISE NOW's nomination for its lack of an unambiguous condemnation of terrorism. Set aside, for a minute, the fact that the film's political leanings do not preclude it from being a great movie. While PARADISE NOW does seek to explain why someone would die for their nation given the circumstances of the Palestinian state, understanding why someone would do something isn't the same as supporting what they do. The film poses suicide bombing as an emotional reaction imposed upon the ignorant and bitter by those who should know better, rather than a legitimate form of political protest. The final shot is a clue to the film's true opinions on the subject--we don't show two virgins taking a noble martyr to paradise, as the "martyr mission" organizer claims, but a blank void, an eloquent statement that terrorism is a road that leads to nothing, and certainly not a road that leads to lasting peace.

PS: Kudos to whoever gets the reference in the title, even if it is only Victor.