A feature film about suicide-bombers: Is that possible? Can the
medium of fictional film capture this kind of destructive activity,
which we as Israelis - except for the victims themselves - have
usually experienced by watching the TV broadcasts live from the
sites where a suicide-bombing has taken place? This is something we
have usually just heard from a distance, following the sirens of
the ambulances to the place where a suicide -bombing has just
occurred, while opening the radio or the TV to take part in the
aftermath, counting the dead and the wounded. We also probably all
know someone who has been killed or wounded in a suicide
attack.
When we are made aware of what has happened, the suicide-bomber
does not exist anymore - only his or her name is announced as a
reminder of what has been a human being who was willing to
sacrifice him or herself. And sometimes there is the pre-suicide
recording full of fanatic determination and religius language. What
we see on the screen as we watch the scene of a suicide- bombing is
the gradually unfolding narrative of how many victims this suicide-
bombing has caused - never the actual preparations for it nor the
arrival to the scene.
What the Director Has Done
What director Hany Abu-Assad shows in his successful and well made
film Paradise Now is thus exactly what is usually not within the
reach of representation or reproduction, the negative in the
photographic sense of the word, of the documentations of suicide-
bombings on both sides: the preparations up until a few seconds
before the bomb explodes. In the film we significantly never see
the explosion itself and cannot even be sure that it did indeed
take place.
That is one aspect of "Paradise in the film" - we are spared the
sights and sounds of the suffering caused by the violence. But we
do have in our retinas and ears many scenes and soundscapes of the
afterwards. There is thus a gap between the close-up on the
suicide- bomber with which the film ends, and our "screen-memories"
- literally consisting of pictures from the screen - of suicide-
bombings. And it is impossible, at least for an Israeli spectator,
not to bridge this gap over and over again as the film
evolves.
In his film, Abu-Assad has created a fictional narrative closely
following two Palestinian childhood friends - Said, played by Kais
Nashef, and Khaled, played by Ali Suliman - residents of Nablus who
have been recruited for a suicide strike in Tel Aviv. The film
focuses on their last days together: their work at a garage, their
farewell from their respective families and their crossing of the
barbed wire of the border between the occupied territories of
Palestine and Israel, being brought by car to Tel Aviv. They also
get involved with a young woman called Suha - played by Lubna
Azabal - who has just returned to Palestine from an apparently long
period of exile.
The title of the film also ironically echoes the Israeli peace
movement - "Peace Now" - instead inviting us to a glimpse of the
supposed Palestinian route to paradise. The failure of the one
"Now" seems to feed the perpetuation of the other.
Paradise serves in general as a concept for summing up human dreams
of perfection, situated either at the very beginning of Creation,
as in the Book of Genesis, or in an individual's afterlife if she
or he deserves it according to a given code, as is preached by all
three monotheistic religions of the Book. Paradise is thus long ago
or in the hereafter. There is, accordingly, no greater contrast
than between the two terms of the title "Paradise" and "Now." From
the title onwards the film thus rolls out its critical and ironical
position to the idea of attaining Paradise - now. One aspect of the
critique is on a pragmatic level and points at the huge gap between
the anxiety and pressure-ridden existence of Palestinians under
occupation and anything that resembles even an earthly variant of
paradise. The westernized and independent Suha embodies another,
individualistic angle of the pragmatic stance to local politics, on
the one hand, and, alternatively, as a relatively liberated woman,
she signals other possibilities of attaining Eden on earth.
The other aspect of the critique is attained by the openly
non-idealized characterization of the local leaders who recruit the
youngsters to the suicide act.
Countering Stereotypical Expectations
Two details in the plot interestingly, as well as problematically,
counter the stereotypical expectations that we have about suicide-
bombers on the basis of the information that we are used to with
regard to the phenomenon. First of all the motivation of the main
character, Khaled who presumably carries out the suicide- bombing
after the end of the film, is not based on what most subjective
testimonies of the perpetrators seem to communicate, the wish to
avenge a close relative's or friend's death caused by Israeli
soldiers, or, in some cases, by Israeli civilians. Here the
motivation grows out of the need to erase the shame caused by
Khaled's father's having been a collaborator with the occupation
power. The other departure from the suicide- bomb acts, as they are
experienced by Israelis, is the bomber's avoiding stepping into a
bus in which there are many civilians and preferring as a target a
bus filled with soldiers. It is hard to quantify how much and for
whom exactly these deviations from widely accepted notions weaken
the realistic effect of the film and, by that, its power to bring
forward its complex message. What seems clear though is that in
this film, more than usually, the meaning is in the eyes of the
beholder ,and a Palestinian view may reveal quite different
reflections from ours.