Paradise Now
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Movie Reviews of Paradise Now
Movie Review: Absolute Must See
Summary: 5 Stars
I went to see Paradise Now. Never before have I seen a movie affect an audience as profoundly as this minimalist Palestinian directed movie. At the end of the movie, the credits rolled without music or fanfare of any kind. For the first two to three minutes of those credits, not a soul stirred nor spoke. The audience just sat there in stunned silence. One person stood to leave and the rest of us then followed like lemmings, but still, there was not a sound. People left the theatre as if they were leaving a gravesite; silent, reverent and stunned by loss.
If the chance presents itself, you need to walk, run or crawl to your nearest theatre when this film is offered. It will damage your soul when you see it, you will leave the theatre, with a sinking feeling in your spirit, wondering how this could possibly be going on in a civilized world. But knowing that, get to the movie, and deal with the soul damage later. Dealing with that damage is part of the experience. In the film, the director does not take a stand pro or con, he leaves that to the audience. It will create an argument in your soul, how do you balance the true horror of suicide bombing with the totally ordinary people that carry it out. It will challenge you. It will horrify you. It will change you. There is no way that you can be the same after the experience. The silence that it invokes at the end is the beginning of the discussion. Paradise Now is a must see movie for anyone interested in understanding all sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
Movie Review: Before reviewing a film . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
. . .it's best to actually watch it, so as to lessen one's chances of coming off looking like a reactionary. For instance, had the reviewer below who wrote this line--
"There is no dillema [sic], the suicide bombers do not think twice during their last 24 hours before the deed."
--seen the film all the way through, he would have known that both of the bombers do in fact question their mission (and quite gut-wrenchingly at that) at various times throughout the entire film, right up until the end. It is, in fact, the bombers' ambivalence about their mission that provides and sustains the plot's necessary tensions.
As noted by other reviewers, this film is not about who's "right" or "wrong" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, Abu-Assad seeks to present what life is like for the average Palestinian living on land occupied and controlled by a foreign power, and to explore the many components--political and economic oppression, feelings of guilt and shame over one's father having been executed for collaborating with the Israelis, plain old despair, and, yes, religious fanaticism--that go into leading a person to strap a bomb around his (or her) own waist. It is a very complex portrait psychologically speaking, one that likely corresponds rather closely to the complex reality it seeks to portray. If that amounts to "humanizing" terrorists, then so be it. Like it or not, they are human beings. Writing them off as anything less is dangerous and counterproductive.
Movie Review: A surgical strike against injustice!
Summary: 5 Stars
PARADISE NOW is a very powerful and thought provoking film. As an American, I have always wondered about the degree of hate those people must possess to be suicide bombers. To give ones life just to hurt the other side - that's a pretty intense hate. BUT NO, that's not it at all. It's the idea of freedom. The same idea which created America. They are freedom fighters reduced to using the most precious thing a person possesses because they have little else.
I was stunned at the difference between the Israeli life and the Palestinians lives. It was like I stepped back in time, when in Palestine. The Palestinian side put me in mind of the Biblical Palestine that Jesus walked.
It was so enlightening to find out that their decision was NOT just hysterical fanatism as it's always portrayed in the Pro- Israeli media,
BUT RATHER a surgical strike against injustice.
My most favorite and thoughtful line in the entire film was when SAID explained to SUHA that the resistance is defined by the occupation and when he pointed out that they are the occupiers, oppressors, bulldozers but yet they are the victims! Ha, what a gross miscarriage of justice!
This film really opened my eyes to the "other side". My church, my schools, my neighborhood and town have all been awakened and are now looking deeper than just what the media tries to spoon feed us.
It certainly deserved all the awards and recognition it walked away with.
Movie Review: Eyes and Hearts Wide Open
Summary: 5 Stars
'Paradise Now' is all the more powerful for its understatement in portraying two young jihadists, Said and Khaled. We sense the scope of their environmental ills, having been introduced to the border town of 'N' through the eyes of the daughter of a 'martyr', returning from Paris to become a resident. Director,Hany Abu-Assad enlarges our tolerance for our fellow beings by allowing us to identify with the martyrs in their absolute otherness to the extent that we understand what is motivating them to strap explosives to themseves and gain their paradise now, through ultimate sacrifice. It's a terrible thing, the white screen at film's end signifying that erasure, an absolute act of nihilistic theological despair.The film enables us to put ourselves in their postion, to feel almost the intensity, the insanity of the contradiction that requires their act. Unless we're capable of such an imaginative leap, as the film conjures, we remain strangers to eachother, maintaining the tragic dualism we currently endure with two implacable systems, hating and bombing eachother. I've seen no other film that comes close in attempting to understand this. The laudable,'Syriana's' terrorists weren't granted this kind of nuanced dimension, where we deeply feel the dilemna, the decisions and implications of the jihadist's life. Without proseletyizing for an instance,Abu-Assad transports us(no pun intended) into the terror of the situation. A real and remarkable film.Movie Review: Paradise Now
Summary: 5 Stars
My current account to Amazon is temporarily unavailable, but I still feel the urge to express my opinion through this handy Kids review. THIS WAS A TERRIFIC MOVIE. To all of you Americans who are blinded by the one sided media pointing to Muslims/Palestinians as terrorists, watch this! The OTHER point of view.
Very little do people know of the conditions millions of people are living in in occupied Palestine. In fact, over 4 million people are crammed into the west bank alone (roughly half the size of rhode island); 75% of them living in refugee camps. And hell, they've been living like this for the past 100 years: living under curfews, under the constant fear of their house to be bombed next by the Israelies, their fear that their school children will get shot in the head on their way to school, their fear of getting murdered on the way to get an aspirin for their disease-stricken children. PARADISE NOW explains WHY some Palestinians choose to commit suicide and leave this HORRIBLE life (as opposed to the Israelies in Tel Aviv who are living the life of kings only a few miles, or should I say a wall away from a ghetto.) It is not a one-sided opinion, just the first time you see the ideology of some terrorists: should I live in this living hell, or just die?
Just something to think about.
5 stars.
Also recommend watch GAZA STRIP also available on Amazon.
Thanks.
~Alex Smith