Palestinians swathed in bombs going to blow themselves up along with as many Israelis as possible does not seem a promising subject for comedy. Neither did the carnage of Bosnia (No Man's Land) or nuclear war (Dr. Strangelove). Rather than sweetening the horrors (as "Life Is Beautiful" is culpable of having done for Nazi death camps), "Paradise Now," the new film from writer-director Hany Abu-Assad (Rana's Wedding) does not make the horror of terrorist acts less horrible (for the terrorists and their families as well as for the victims).

Abu-Assad was playing with fire (literally and metaphorically) in subject matter and also by shooting on location in Nablus, as well as Abu-Assad's hometown, Nazareth, with recurrent gunfire and missile attacks in the vicinity, and the possibility of lethal interference in the film-shooting by the occupying Israeli army or various armed Palestinian groups that might take umbrage at the movie—especially if they realized that the movie was going to make confidence in attaining paradise through self-immolation dubious, and absurdist.

Plot-spoiler alert

Knowing that the movie was about suicide bombers, I assumed that the Palestinian woman going through an Israeli checkpoint at the start of the movie was one. I was steeled for an explosion, but it turned out that Suha (Lubna Azabal) was the voice in the movie condemning terrorism (as counterproductive, providing an alibi for ruthless revenge), and had special authority as the daughter of a revered (martyred) leader.

The movie then zeroes in on a pair of bearded automotive mechanics, Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), who have an absurdist confrontation with a dissatisfied customer about whether the bumper they have replace or fixed on his car is level. Khaled eventually gets fed up and his response leads to him being fired.

Then the two are shown relaxing on a hillside. A boy brings them tea on a tray and is not satisfied with his tip, as Khaled makes gruesome faces to drive the boy away.

Just as I thought that Suha was a terrorist, this Abbot and Costello-like pair seemed unlikely terrorists. Wrong again! They have been selected by a locally revered school teacher, Jamal (Amer Hlehel) to inaugurate a new round of suicide bombings. Jamal spends the night at the household presided over by Said's widowed mother (Hiam Abbass), who senses something is wrong, but does not know what.

At four in the morning, Said goes to Suha's house to giver her the keys to her car. Surprisingly to me, she invites him in for tea (a single woman alone with a young man at 4 in the morning? in Nablus??).

The next morning the two (lifelong) friends are shorn of their curly locks and beards, ritually washed, provided with black suits, fed a final feast (story-boarded by Leonardo da Vinci), and final messages are videotaped. These last are (I know it's hard to conceive) very funny. They have rhetorical texts to read, though Khaled also wants to tell his mother where she should get water filters instead of where she has been purchasing them. There are various technical problems with the production of the martyr tape. (Later in the movie, Suha learns that these are sold and rented, but that confessions of collaborators before they are executed are even bigger sellers.)

En route to the point where they will go through a security fence and be picked up and driven to Tel Aviv, Khaled asks what will happen after he detonates the bombs. Jamal tells him that two angels will descend and carry him up to Paradise (see the title). This promise sounds particularly hollow, and does not seem to convince Khaled, but he is going to proceed with Said (whose motives are more fully laid out). Much that soldiers do is related more to not letting their comrades down than to ideology and belief in the rationales for killing and accepting being killed, and Khaled does not appear to have given much thought to his religion or the dogmas of the group that is sending him to his death

The incipient martyrs/terrorists get through the fence but there is an Israeli patrol car. Said hides. Khaled slips back through the fence and drives off. When Said follows, the car is gone, and when he gets back to the tile factory from which the operation was launched, everyone has cleared out, fearing Said was captured, tortured, and provided information on it.

Khaled is convinced that Said would not talk and is probably back. The Che Guevera-like commandante gives him the rest of the day to find Said. Khaled intuits the places Said would go, but keeps just missing him (as in "Turn Left, Turn Right"). The race against the clock is traditional thriller territory, and Nablus provides a setting filled with obstacles (Israeli roadblocks thrown up unpredictably).

Beyond that, even with a plot-spoiler alert, I will not go. Suha joins Khaled's search and lays out her case against terrorism. I've already noted that Said lays out his motivations (centered on his father have been executed as a collaborator with the occupiers, shame, and resentment).

Despite the thriller elements and very specific location of the characters in the Palestine of today, there is something very Waiting for Godot in the movie. The boys are waiting for their mission that will redeem them, revenge them, and get immediately to paradise, but their rendez-vous is as comically unfulfilled as that of Didi and Gogo.

End plot-spoiler alert

Jamal comes across as a sinister ideologue preying on the trust of the young and on their humiliations by the occupiers. I'd be curious if he seems a hero of the resistance to Palestinian audiences, and whether the preparations for martyrdom seem as ludicrous to them. I have no doubts that Abu-Assad is satirizing rather than advocating terrorism, but selective perception is so strong that some audiences may see the organization as heroic and the film's protagonist as cowardly vacillators (and Suha corrupted by western notions that fighting violence with violence perpetuates violence). And the contrast between the Nablus locations and Tel Aviv is considerable, with different imaginable readings of the contrast. As I said, Abu-Assad was playing with fire in making this movie.

The ending did not seem to satisfy the audience with whom I saw the movie. One of those "That's it?" cop-out endings. The last half of the movie contains all the action, but also lengthy expositions that verge on talking-head interviews in documentaries (two lengthy accounts by Said, more fragmentary ones from Suha).

Said and Khaled are interesting characters, not least in lacking religious or ideological fervor. They are unremarkable boy-next-door Nablus-variety: underemployed young men (not quite slackers) whose involvement in terrorism is unnervingly matter-of-fact. Suha is my surrogate in finding Khaled's retrospect about being part of a mob that burned down the only movie theater in town chilling in its banality.

I would entertain arguments that the movie cops out in that the boys are sent to kill as many soldiers as possible, evading the questions (in Qu'ranic texts among other loci) about slaughtering civlians. And I would also extrapolate from these boys next door to Iraqui ones.

(A Palestinian-Dutch-German-French co-production, "Paradise Now" was workshopped at Sundance and has many of the hallmarks of American independent films, including alienated youth and extended monologues filling in back stories. Abu-Assad is based in Amsterdam and is a cosmopolitan like Suha, though having relatives in Palestinian territories, including his native Nazareth.)


Recommended:
Yes