Paradise Now

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Paradise Now

Paradise Now film poster
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad
Produced by Bero Beyer
Written by Hany Abu-Assad,
Bero Beyer,
Pierre Hodgson
Starring Kais Nashef,
Ali Suliman,
Lubna Azabal,
Hiam Abbass
Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures (USA)
Release date(s) February 14, 2005
Running time 90 minutes
Language Arabic
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Paradise Now (Arabic: الجنّة الآن‎) is a 2005 film directed by Hany Abu-Assad about two Palestinian men preparing for a suicide attack in Israel. It won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Paradise Now follows Palestinian childhood friends Said and Khaled who live in Nablus and have been recruited for suicide attacks in Tel Aviv. It focuses on what would be their last days together.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Their handlers tell them that the next day will be the attack. The pair records videos glorifying God and their cause, and they bid their unknowing families and loved ones goodbye. The resistance group tells Said and Khaled that they should act normally to avoid arousing suspicion while they stay with their families the night before the attack. The next day to prepare for their mission Said and Khaled shave off their hair and beards and don suits in order to look like Israelis, the group of people they are going to attack. Their cover story for why they have transformed themselves is that they are going to a wedding.

An explosive belt is attached to each man, with the handlers being the only ones with the expertise to remove it. They are instructed to detonate the bombs at the same place, a military check point in Israel, but with a time interval of 15 minutes. Thus the second bomb will kill police arriving after the first blast.

They cross the Israeli border, but have to flee from guards. Khaled returns to their handlers, but Said runs away. The handlers remove Khaled's explosive belt and issue a search for Said. Khaled believes he is the most fit person to find Said since he knows him best and he is given till the end of that day to find him. After Said escapes from the guards he re-enteres Israeli territory alone. At one point, he considers detonating the bomb on a commercial bus, but he is discouraged by the children on board. Eventually, Said reveals his reason for taking part in the suicide bombing. While in a car with the girl he loves (Suha), he explains that his father was an ameel (a Palestinian working for the Israelis). Khaled finds Said, still wearing the belt, and about to detonate while lying on his father's grave, because Said fears that somebody is coming for him. They return to the handlers, and Said convinces them that the attack need not be canceled, because he is ready for it. Influenced by Suha, who discovered their plan, Khaled cancels his suicide attack. However, he travels with Said to Tel Aviv, to convince him to cancel his attack too. With a trick Said gets rid of Khaled. Said pretends to agree to cancel the attack, but only to make Khaled get into a car driven by his associates. The car drives off with Khaled, leaving Said alone. The film ends with a screen flash after a shot of Said sitting in a bus full of Israeli civilians and soldiers. Presumably the flash stands for his detonating the bomb.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Production

Hany Abu-Assad and co-writer Bero Beyer started working on the script in 1999, but it took them five years to get the story before cameras. The original script was about one man searching for his friend, who is a suicide bomber, but it evolved into a story of two friends, Said and Khaled.

The filmmakers faced great difficulties making the film on location. A land mine exploded 300 meters away from the set. [1] Whilst filming in Nablus, Israeli helicopter gunships launched a missile attack on a car near the film's set one day, prompting six crew members to abandon the production for good. [2] Paradise Now's location manager was kidnapped by a Palestinian faction during the shoot and was not released until Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office intervened.[3] In an interview with the Telegraph, Hany Abu-Assad said, "if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do it again. It's not worth endangering your life for a movie." [4]

[edit] Distribution and marketing

  • Tagline: From the most unexpected place, comes a bold new call for peace.

The Israel Film Fund is underwriting the film’s distribution in Israel.

[edit] Statements by the filmmakers

In Hany Abu-Assad's Golden Globe acceptance speech he made a plea for a Palestinian state, saying he hoped the Golden Globe as “a recognition that the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally" [5].

In an interview with a Jewish American Tikkun magazine , Hany Abu-Assad was asked "When you look ahead now, what gives you hope?", "The conscience of the Jewish people" he answered. "The Jews have been the conscience of humanity, always, wherever they go. Not all Jews, but part of them. Ethics. Morality. They invented it! I think Hitler wanted to kill the conscience of the Jews, the conscience of humanity. But this conscience is still alive...Maybe a bit weak...But still alive. Thank God." [6]

Co-producer Amir Harel is a Jewish Israeli, who told reporters that "First and foremost the movie is a good work of art", adding that “If the movie raises awareness or presents a different side of reality, this is an important thing.”[7]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Oscars

Paradise Now was the first Palestinian film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. An earlier Palestianian film, Divine Intervention (2002), had controversially failed to gain admission to the competition, allegedly because films nominated for this award must be put forward by the government of their country, and Palestine is not a fully sovereign state. However, since entities such as Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan have been submitting entries for years although they are not sovereign states with full United Nations representation, accusations of a double standard were made.[8]

Paradise Now was submitted to the Academy and to the Golden Globes as a film from 'Palestine'. It was referred to as such at the Golden Globes. However, Israeli officials, including Consul General Ehud Danoch and Consul for Media and Public Affairs Gilad Millo, tried to extract a guarantee from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Paradise Now would not be presented in the ceremony as representing the state of Palestine, despite the fact it was introduced as such in the Academy Awards' official website.[9] The Academy Awards began to refer to the film's country instead as 'the Palestinian Authority'. This decision angered director-writer Hany Abu-Assad, who said it represented a slap in the face for the Palestinian people and their national identity. The Academy subsequently referred to it as a submission from the 'Palestinian Territories'.[10] In a further complication, Israeli writer Irit Linor points out that "according to internationally accepted conventions, the nationality of a film is usually determined by the country that invested in it - and that while the film was categorized by the Academy as representing Palestine, it was produced with European funds, by an Israeli-Arab director." [11].

On March 1, 2006, it was reported that a group representing Israeli victims of suicide bombings had asked the Oscar organizers to disqualify the film. These protesters, some of them family members of people murdered or severely injured persons by suicide bombers claimed showing the film is immoral and encourages hurting and killing civilians in terror acts.[12]

[edit] Censorship

Palestine's Minister of Culture, Attallah Abu al-Sibbah, wanted to censor the film before being screened commercially in the Gaza strip Cinema.[13]

[edit] Responses

Paradise Now has an 88% rating on the review compendium website Rotten Tomatoes. [14]

Stephen Holding, in his October 28, 2005 article in the New York Times, applauded the suspense and plot twists in the movie, and the risks involved humanizing suicide bombers, saying "[it is easier to see a] suicide bomber as a 21st-century Manchurian Candidate - a soulless, robotic shell of a person programmed to wreak destruction - than it is to picture a flesh-and-blood human being doing the damage." [15]

Irit Linor, one of Israel's top novelists and screenwriters wrote in a February 7, 2006 article in Ynet News that Paradise Now is "an exciting, quality Nazi film." She claims that the sophisticated techniques and symbolism are used to present caricatures, recycle antisemitic myths and even introduce christological associations in the film. [16]

[edit] Awards

[edit] Academy Award

[edit] Golden Globe

[edit] Other awards won

[edit] External links

Preceded by
The Sea Inside		 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
2006		 Succeeded by
Letters from Iwo Jima
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