Cinema
Mission impossible
Olivia Glazebrook
Paradise Now 15, general release The leading characters in Paradise Now are two young Palestinian men, Said and Khaled, who work dead-end jobs in a car-repair shop in Nablus. Their free time is spent lounging on a couple of old car seats which rest on a sunny hillside looking out over the city. There the two mop-top mechanics exchange desultory banter, smoke the hookah and are waited on by a truculent boy with a tea tray. But unlike a lot of young men who lead relatively similar lives, Said and Khaled plan to put a stop to their dead-end existence. They have volunteered for a joint mission: a suicide bombing; an act of martydom; a terrorist atrocity.
Naturally enough, Paradise Now stirred up a ruckus in America when it was Oscarnominated for Best Foreign Language Film. Its subject matter led to protests portraying suicide bombers as ordinary young men is a risky business. It is interesting, in the light of this reception, that the film has also been queried by Atallah Abu al-Sibbah, culture minister in the cabinet of the new Hamas government. Keen to reopen cinemas on the Gaza strip, Mr Sibbah was not entirely enthusiastic about showing Paradise Now when questioned by the Guardian last week: ‘There are problems, there are some scenes, some observations, some pictures. We can negotiate. I will see it first. If I need to cut it I will cut.’ That the film seems to satisfy no one is a point very much in its favour.
Said and Khaled are visited, at their separate homes, by their handlers (representing an unnamed Palestinian organisation) who tell them that they have been chosen for a mission in Tel Aviv, the very next day. The handlers, known to Said’s and Khaled’s families only as friends, are welcomed in to stay the night. Said ventures out after dark to visit a girl, Suha, whom he met that morning. Suha has recently returned to Nablus from abroad. The daughter of a martyr, she is vivacious, smart, educated and resolutely against the type of violence which Said is about to undertake. Their conversation, their connection, can only go so far before they are stymied by their differences. The following morning the two men are prepared for their mission: they read their statements of martyrdom to a camera, they are fed, shaved and dressed in dark suits. Then explosives are taped round their midriffs. After that, events go from already pretty hideous to even worse, and then still more awful.
But oddly enough, the film is full of humour. Black humour, necessarily, but there it is all the same. When Khaled has the bomb taken off him (he loses Said at the border and returns to Nablus), he complains that removing the tape is painful. ‘We never thought we’d have to take it off,’ replies Jamal, the lugubrious handler. And the statement Khaled, clutching a machine gun, makes to camera has to be reshot when the sound fails to record. The second time around, the watching handlers share a sandwich while he speaks. Shocked snorts of laughter greeted these dark jokes.
Crucially, the director, Hany Abu-Assad, does not expect us to condone or condemn his fictional characters, but simply to watch. It is a frustrating position, actually — one wants to be right in there, arguing, rather than sitting gaping in the cinema. When Suha, racing across Nablus in search of the lost Said, gets into a blazing row with Khaled it is such a relief — finally, the argument we have been waiting for. It is not right, says she. It is the only kind of protest available to us, says he. But, we think, but ... but ... and then the film goes relentlessly on.
Trying to make his audience understand the limited life available to the two men — ‘Under the occupation you’re already dead,’ one says to the other — is the hardest task Hany Abu-Assad has set himself. Neither character is a religious fanatic; they have chosen to be used as the weapons of an oppressed, powerless people. Their decision to volunteer is made before the start of the film: it is a fact. To accept their conviction, and then — as first Said and then Khaled falters — to accept that their resolution is not absolute, is a tough call. But to watch the gentle Said, who leaves Suha’s house to run through the dawn streets in order to meet Jamal and be loaded with explosives, makes one feel absolutely desperate.
Just a word on Glastonbury (15, selected cinemas), a documentary about the music festival: far too long and quite repetitive, but full of reassuringly bonkers English antics that really cheer one up. Also the ever-pleasing sight of Michael Eavis’s beard, which always looks to me as if a handful of lawn mowings blew on to his chin in a gale.
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