"Paradise Now" is not an Arab film. This is a film in the style of the Western hemisphere, clearly made according to the genre principle of "a film of protest". The Terror of Suicide is all the rage in the market. This is not the right time to generate the real picture or to make risky experiences in a quest for new cinematic tools. The first one to produce a film on the terrorists in Nablus will sweep a fund. If you won't catch the niche swiftly, somebody else will.
It contains all the prerequisite components to insure its inclusion at festivals where awards are given. Scenes of Nablus are filmed from a mountain range in the soft light of the setting sun. Young people struggle to find their way while laboring in a garage. Thrown in are ideological indecision, a little love, simple food and the hospitality provided by a poor family. A bespectacled teacher worries for his students and their studies. The opening scenes show an arrogant soldier examining the identity documents and suitcase of a nice-looking girl, while his cynical and leery gaze rests upon her.
The spectators are meant to understand the film. For this to happen, the film should talk to them in understandable language and in well-known imagery. The writers know that in order for the spectators to believe them, they must cheat them gracefully. The film does not deal with the details of war and the different meanings of the "occupation" concept that is in use by various population groups in the Middle East. That would be adverse to the idea of a film planned to be as shallow as poster paper.
Indeed, bellicose Islam is featured, but as the story develops it is pushed into a remote corner. It is the bespectacled teacher who informs Haled and Said that they must go and wreak revenge. He talks with them about paradise, but excludes embarrassing references to the 72 virgins. They pray and swear on the Koran that they will avenge in the name of Allah, but then they don't execute "the action" until they have first been deterred from doing so and return from it. This provides the opportunity for the spectator to be served up with the required portion of suffering, a hatred of the enemy and speeches about freedom.
Spectators love the kind of film that serves them a universal, easily digestible, story. It expands their horizons and creates empathy. The commander of the terrorist group, who embraces the destined martyrs, has every appearance of being heroic, one that wouldn't embarrass his colleagues in any underground film around the world. This is not Raad Carmi , the ruffian terrorist from Tulkarem, who sent his people to execute attacks in order to exploit their wives in their absence. Here, we see a typical popular film hero, superior and pure.
Two of the suicide terrorists shave, put on black suits and adopt the look of young lawyers, indistinguishable from any young lawyer anywhere. They are excited about the oncoming "action", like before receiving their diploma at the Bar.
We do not see in the movie a woman who was given the choice to die as a martyr or be butchered with a knife as a "desecrator of family honor". We also do not notice any teenager being forced to be a suicide-bomber amid threats that his family will be harmed should he refuse.
Of course, we also don't see a young boy with an education deficiency who struggles to read his premartyrdom speech, which must therefore be dictated to him; let alone the fact that he does not understand the mysteries of Islam and Jihad. Nor are we to expect that the hero will search for a bus full of families returning on Saturday night from prayer at the Western Wall, as it happens in the real life.
By contrast, a young eloquent fellow is presented. His friend Sa'id does not explode the first bus he encounters. He notices, among the Jews who get on the bus, a mother with a little boy and decides to withdraw.
Sa'id, the main hero, returns to Nablus, visits his father's tomb and has proper cinematic doubts. In front of the commander of the terrorist group, he gives a pensive but ardent speech against "the occupation". Israel is not mentioned by name; this is a universal speech against all "occupations", real and pseudo. Only then he finally decides Haled, the friend of Said in the movie, decides at the last moment to return and search for a "different way." And miracle of miracles, his operators come to collect him without delay. They don't tell him what a girl named Shafika was told by her handlers in a real and similar situation: "Many people expect you to explode yourself, so you had better do it." The finale scene: a bus, the majority of the passengers are soldiers, no children are seen. Next to the terrorist sits a toll soldier with a parachutist's badge, talking with a woman soldier. The camera focuses for a long time on the sad eyes of the terrorist and then, the white background fills the screen, apparently to symbolize the detonation.
Cut There are no human limbs beings spread on the asphalt and no rescue team with covered plastic shoes, collecting burned shreds of human flesh. The film sends metaphors meant to win the spectator's heart, and it has to be clean, full of gorgeous heroes, foolish enemies and sublime feelings. Spilled bowels and dying spasms cannot be seen. There is only clean death, fast and without suffering. It's like opening a door to a world of complete immaculateness.
It contains all the prerequisite components to insure its inclusion at festivals where awards are given. Scenes of Nablus are filmed from a mountain range in the soft light of the setting sun. Young people struggle to find their way while laboring in a garage. Thrown in are ideological indecision, a little love, simple food and the hospitality provided by a poor family. A bespectacled teacher worries for his students and their studies. The opening scenes show an arrogant soldier examining the identity documents and suitcase of a nice-looking girl, while his cynical and leery gaze rests upon her.
The spectators are meant to understand the film. For this to happen, the film should talk to them in understandable language and in well-known imagery. The writers know that in order for the spectators to believe them, they must cheat them gracefully. The film does not deal with the details of war and the different meanings of the "occupation" concept that is in use by various population groups in the Middle East. That would be adverse to the idea of a film planned to be as shallow as poster paper.
Indeed, bellicose Islam is featured, but as the story develops it is pushed into a remote corner. It is the bespectacled teacher who informs Haled and Said that they must go and wreak revenge. He talks with them about paradise, but excludes embarrassing references to the 72 virgins. They pray and swear on the Koran that they will avenge in the name of Allah, but then they don't execute "the action" until they have first been deterred from doing so and return from it. This provides the opportunity for the spectator to be served up with the required portion of suffering, a hatred of the enemy and speeches about freedom.
Spectators love the kind of film that serves them a universal, easily digestible, story. It expands their horizons and creates empathy. The commander of the terrorist group, who embraces the destined martyrs, has every appearance of being heroic, one that wouldn't embarrass his colleagues in any underground film around the world. This is not Raad Carmi , the ruffian terrorist from Tulkarem, who sent his people to execute attacks in order to exploit their wives in their absence. Here, we see a typical popular film hero, superior and pure.
Two of the suicide terrorists shave, put on black suits and adopt the look of young lawyers, indistinguishable from any young lawyer anywhere. They are excited about the oncoming "action", like before receiving their diploma at the Bar.
We do not see in the movie a woman who was given the choice to die as a martyr or be butchered with a knife as a "desecrator of family honor". We also do not notice any teenager being forced to be a suicide-bomber amid threats that his family will be harmed should he refuse.
Of course, we also don't see a young boy with an education deficiency who struggles to read his premartyrdom speech, which must therefore be dictated to him; let alone the fact that he does not understand the mysteries of Islam and Jihad. Nor are we to expect that the hero will search for a bus full of families returning on Saturday night from prayer at the Western Wall, as it happens in the real life.
By contrast, a young eloquent fellow is presented. His friend Sa'id does not explode the first bus he encounters. He notices, among the Jews who get on the bus, a mother with a little boy and decides to withdraw.
Sa'id, the main hero, returns to Nablus, visits his father's tomb and has proper cinematic doubts. In front of the commander of the terrorist group, he gives a pensive but ardent speech against "the occupation". Israel is not mentioned by name; this is a universal speech against all "occupations", real and pseudo. Only then he finally decides Haled, the friend of Said in the movie, decides at the last moment to return and search for a "different way." And miracle of miracles, his operators come to collect him without delay. They don't tell him what a girl named Shafika was told by her handlers in a real and similar situation: "Many people expect you to explode yourself, so you had better do it." The finale scene: a bus, the majority of the passengers are soldiers, no children are seen. Next to the terrorist sits a toll soldier with a parachutist's badge, talking with a woman soldier. The camera focuses for a long time on the sad eyes of the terrorist and then, the white background fills the screen, apparently to symbolize the detonation.
Cut There are no human limbs beings spread on the asphalt and no rescue team with covered plastic shoes, collecting burned shreds of human flesh. The film sends metaphors meant to win the spectator's heart, and it has to be clean, full of gorgeous heroes, foolish enemies and sublime feelings. Spilled bowels and dying spasms cannot be seen. There is only clean death, fast and without suffering. It's like opening a door to a world of complete immaculateness.