Ode to a suicide bomber

GNN

Paradise Now is the story of Said and Khaled, two Palestinians who are best friends and who have secretly offered themselves to die for the cause of ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Set in the West Bank town of Nablus, the film provides a rare opportunity for Western viewers to taste the dust of those war-torn streets. Said and Khaled are beautifully rendered characters who draw sympathy from us as viewers, ultimately making us hope they will not succeed in their mission. And this is the most powerful device of the film, which shifts from a stark character sketch to a taut thriller at the beginning of its well-marked second act.

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad, an Israeli-born Palestinian, the film sustains a level of authentic intimacy that is simultaneously riveting and heartbreaking. Each stage of the boys’ progression toward their deaths is so carefully drawn out that we feel a sense of complicity with their desire for self-immolation. Part of the great tension of Paradise Now is the film’s conscious struggle between celebrating the humanity of its protagonists and staving off the impending sense of doom that is cast over them by their own choices.

Paradise Now makes another, even more vital point about the culture of suicide bombing. That while most Westerner have ascribed to the bombers a deeply irrational religious fervor, one that promises them some great vaunted afterlife in exchange for their act, in reality the mission is purely tactical. It is part of a long legacy of military actions designed to overthrow Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, (also an ATS Thread:The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It’s the Occupation, not the Fundamentalism ) explains it this way:

"The suicide bomber, however, has been widely understood in the western media as a throwback to pre-modernity, either as adult irrationality or as a response of adolescents coerced by patriarchal authority. I think this explanation may be too easy and too self-serving. The reality is more likely the opposite; the suicide bomber is more likely born of a youth revolt than of patriarchal authority. The suicide bomber comes out of the history of the Intifadah."

"The failure of the older generation to find a humane alternative in Palestine in part explains the desperation of the younger generation, resorting to violence in politics. Even then, we need to recognize that the term suicide bomber is a misnomer. The suicide bomber is a category of soldier whose objective is to kill – even if he or she must die to kill."


Some Positive Reviews:

“Especially after 9/11, it is easier for some in the United States to imagine 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.”
New York Times, Stephen Holden

And ofcourse, some Negative Reviews:

“It’s a classic buddy film—if you can ignore the fact that these two guys strap on suicide belts.”
Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park)


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