thmurphy-37414
Paradise Now is the exact opposite of what you think the title is. For example, no one truly believes a film with the title of Paradise Now has anything to do with bombing. There is so much more to this story though past the bombing. It is not truly about what is bad and what is good. There is the feeling of I need to do this for myself, and what not. Anyways, moving on, the movie started off with a woman crossing one of the checkpoints, and it was a very serious scene in the movie. Any wrong move and it was over for her, as there are many guns pointed on her at all times. She is the past main leader's daughter of the rebellion. She chooses to hide from that, though, and does not support what her father has accomplished. She goes to pick up her car from what seems like a junkyard, and there she keeps running into Said. One of the main two friends is Said, and the other is named Khaled. The two friends are chosen for a bombing mission in Tel Aviv. From the start, Khaled is all about doing the bombing, but Said is not. This is due to religion when it comes to Khaled's reasoning. No one knows why Said is going through with it. Even after seeing the movie I still have no idea why Said ends up going through with the bombing, which occurs at a different time. The ironic thing is the roles between the two friends switches. Khaled stays behind, and Said carries out the bombing in Tel Aviv. There is a lot to see in this movie, but I will leave the rest of that up to you.
olrovin
I absolutely loved this movie. It was so interesting to see it from the Palestinian point of view. I feel like most of the news that comes out of that area is from the Israeli perspective so it was refreshing to have a change. I thought this film was pretty intense, and it had me on the edge of my seat more than a few times. The part that really blew my mind was the fact that the two main characters, Khaled and Saïd, were just normal young men trying to live their lives and provide for their families who were turned into suicide bombers. They both seemed very normal and worked together as auto shop repairmen. Suddenly they got called into action for what I assume had already been discussed with them previously. Initially Khaled is the one who seems all in while Saïd appears very hesitant. When the mission gets interrupted and the two young men have to return to the West Bank, things begin to change. It surprised me the deep passion rooted in both these men to do something to help their people. Before viewing this film, I had never had the ability to even try and comprehend why people would sacrifice themselves to kill others by being a suicide bomber but this film made me understand a bit. Both men seemed to believe that this was their only way to fight back against the Israeli occupation. While I don't necessarily agree with their thought process, I can understand why they would feel this way. I love that this film helped open my mind to see a completely different perspective that I would not have had a way of understanding otherwise. Overall I give it 4.5/5 stars.
tao902
A slow but rewarding film about the circumstances of two suicide bombers from the West Bank town of Nablus. The two friends, Said and Khaled, are given a mission that requires them to carry out a bombing in Tel Aviv. The operation does not go smoothly and is postponed, creating the opportunity for their intentions to be questioned, analysed and evaluated. No straightforward explanations or answers are provided.The film obviously highlights the antagonisms between Israel and the Palestinians but it also reveals the debates and divisions amongst Palestinians.
Steve Pulaski
If I were to tell you that Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now is about two suicide bombers, you'd probably wince a little. However, if I told you that the film was a humanization of two Palestinian men planning to conduct a suicide attack on Israel and that the film paints a respectable portrait of the moral and human complexities involved in such an extreme plan, I'd hope you'd think twice. The film concerns Said and Khaled (Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman), two lifelong friends living in Nablus, working rote jobs as mechanics and passing their time by discussing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over hookah. The two are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and go about their daily lives, maintaining as much normalcy as they can in public until they comfortable hide away in a secret hideout with numerous other Palestinian extremists, carrying out their plans of action. These involve complex, down-to-the-minute plans being orchestrated along with the creation and promotion of videos glorifying and praising Allah in the midst of orchestrating these attacks.A key humanization comes during the filming of the video glorifying Allah. Said stands tall, hoisting a rifle and talking about his loyalty to Allah and the message he brings. After one take, the director discovers the video didn't record properly, so they're forced to set up and do it again. Another technical-difficulty occurs during the second taping before the third taping gets it right on the money. Following the director's demand to "cut," Said yells upstairs to his mother that he found water filters cheaper at a place they normally don't go to.Such dialog seems trite and padded, but writers Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, and Pierre Hodgson include these kind of things as a reminder that these suicide bombers are, one, indeed human, two, have families, and three, don't always operate with the kind of breakneck sophistication that we see dramatized on Television shows and Hollywood movies. Mainstream American cinema has had us quietly conditioned to think that everyone in the Middle East is an enemy that possesses enough power and wit to take down America and all its people, almost encouraging us to sleep with one eye open. Abu-Assad, in an act of deviance, shows us the kind of amateur setups these operations often are and the humanity of the characters that are involved with these sort of incidents.In all the glorification, the frenzied reports, and the fear-mongering in America that concerns the Middle East, America's war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the proclaimed War on Terror, Paradise Now is a refreshing and necessary watch to at least give us a more realistic view on how these operations can be conducted. It's rare we see characters like terrorists and suicide bombers drawn in multiple layers, if even presented as characters at all, so the fact that Nashef and Suliman's characters are given names and personalities is a huge step in a progressive direction. The bravery to make a film like this and rise above all the nonsense was a bold feat on part of Abu-Assad and his crew, who had to jump through several hoops to get this film made.From attacks on the set, to interference from actual protest, to threats of censorship from the Israeli government, Paradise Now was in production in the 1990's, but repeated incidents of drama and danger prevented its completion until 2005. Following its release, it became the first Palestinian film to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, deservingly so. In response, Abu-Assad made probably one of the best comments that could've been made about the film's recognition, saying, "the politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing," reminding people that, at the end of the day, these are human lives we're talking about on both ends of the spectrum and that fact should never be lost despite being amidst a wealth of oversimplifications.Starring: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, and Hiam Abbass. Directed by: Hany Abu-Assad.
