Over the weekend, I was able to make the time to watch this movie, Paradise Now, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, which is currently on Youtube. Paradise Now is a movie about two Palestinian freedom fighters who will defend their country to the grave, which is exactly what they decide to do.
Within their group of men who specialize in acts of terror against Israelis, they both volunteer to be suicide bombers, without telling their family.
Said, one of the two suicide bombers, tends to be a very serious man with a very loving family, a beautiful mysterious new girl in town that he takes an interest in, and a humiliating past that he feels he needs to make up for. He does this by volunteering to become a suicide bomber. His friend, Khaled is filled with more humor than Said, and tends to be very impulsive. But who wouldn't if they decided to become an actual suicide bomber?
Anywho, when the time comes, their plan goes horribly wrong, and they are almost caught by the Israeli police. Khaled and Said run off, separating themselves from each other. Khaled finds the group he was previously with while Said strays off and loses them after they frantically decide they have to leave to find Said. And so it goes for almost the rest of the movie Said going from place to place trying to find his group while his group is trying to find him, all the while he has a bomb attached around his chest.
Abu-Assad described the film along the lines of something like this: "The film is an artistic point of view of that political issue. The politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing." I completely agreed with this description, because in reality, this issue it quite possibly a very messy one, and most of us have firm views on it, when in reality the opinions we hold on the conflict are much more complicated than we would assume, whether we believe in peace, or one country or the other needing to defend itself, and we must take into account the human stance on it rather than the political.
I also really liked this movie because it was not necessarily on one side or the other, but it merely gave a fictional insight on the life of someone who had to go through this problem and want so desperately to fight for what they believed in. I would give this film a 4.5/5, because it was a good portrayal of the inside life, and the ending shocked me to where I was thinking about it for days afterwards.
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