Paradise Now presents an oddly romanticized view of suicide bombing, subject matter usually seen through the eyes of a documentary or news camera. One would expect such a politically volatile subject to be treated as fact, not with heightened style and emotion. The movie’s great achievement, however, is its ability to constantly seem self-aware and never lose control of either extreme.
The movie is an atypically Western take on the heavily news-covered Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The story follows two young Palestinian men, Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) during the 48 hours after they agree to martyr themselves on a suicide mission in nearby Tel Aviv. Less specifically, it depicts a friendship placed in a cultural and political situation so fraught with violence that the two would willingly sacrifice their lives to take others. Even more generally, one can see the pair simply as men aware of their eminent deaths.
The film’s true dynamic, and its strength, comes out in its story and characterization rather than its moral authority. The relationship of these two friends, engulfed in the brutal circumstances of the conflict, reveals itself as the heart of the film, sacrificing the opportunity to voice a distinct political opinion. The passions and complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are translated into the personal conflict within both Said and Khaled. Through this vehicle, Western audiences might be able to relate more personally to ideas and events as foreign as these.
The easy pace allows the audience to focus on the psyche of the characters, the only clues of which are given through creeping zooms into looks of slight uneasiness. Some might be put off by such drastic subtlety of the film, never telling the viewer quite what the characters are thinking. However, this ambiguity seems necessary to avoid any political leaning. As aesthetically oriented as it is, the film never plays the card of empty melodrama: The audience is made aware of the characters’ closeness through the subtleties of an actor’s face or the intensity of a shot, rather than through obvious flashbacks and tender montage. In this way, Paradise Now is a film that remains in control of itself, despite its many complexities.
