Filling in the gaps
Hani Mustafa on one Oscar near-miss
That the Palestinian question has seldom been out of the headlines in recent years may not bode well for the day to day lives of ordinary Palestinians; it has, however, acted to boost the profile of Palestinian cinema. In 2002 the Palestinian film Yadun Ilahiyya (Divine Intervention), directed by Elia Suleiman, received the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. In the same year Hani Abu Asaad screened Al-Quds Fi Yawm Akhar (the title in English being Rana's Wedding ) in Montpellier to some acclaim. Al-Ganna Al-Aan (Paradise Now), the same director's latest film, recently won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, in addition to prizes for best screenplay at the European Film Festival, Best Film and Best Editing at the Netherlands Film Festival and an award from Amnesty International presented during its screening at the Berlin International Film Festival.
That Paradise Now won the Golden Globe led many to expect it to go on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. That prize, however, went to the South African film Tsotsi. With hindsight, it was far from certain that the film would garner an Oscar. It does, after all, represent Palestine, and the Academy this year appears to have steered clear of openly political films.
Paradise Now begins on a quiet day in Nablus. While the director is at pains to create a relatively normal atmosphere for the characters, he inserts into the sound track the sound of a large explosion that, though it lasts for a minute, has no direct relationship with the events of the film or its characters. Such random explosions are simply part of the backdrop of life.
The opening shot of the film shows a young girl, on her way to Nablus, standing at a checkpoint where an Israeli soldier searches her handbag. The girl and the soldier stare into each other's eyes. It is one of only two scenes -- the second being the last scene in the film -- containing a representative of the Israeli army of occupation. Audiences who expect a film portraying the Arab-Israeli conflict to show the kind of violence that is daily reported on news channels will take Paradise Now to task for such circumspection: it does, however, have the advantage of allowing the film to focus on the characters whose stories it purports to tell.
The young girl we see at the beginning of the film is called Soha (Lubna Azabal, who played the lead role in Exils, directed by French-Algerian Tony Gatlif, who won the 2004 Best Director Award at Cannes), the daughter of a martyred freedom fighter who lived between France and Morocco. The two main characters are Said and Khaled, who work in a car repair workshop owned by a man called Abu Selim. In introducing these characters the tempo of the film conveys the general sense of boredom the two friends experience, most powerfully in a scene where, ensconced on a cliff overlooking the city, they gaze vacantly into the middle distance while smoking a shisha. Even the tea that they are brought is lukewarm.
The actors skillfully convey emotions that the dialogue does not express. The scene where Said (played by Qais Nashef) meets Soha while she is buying an old car from Abu Selim's shop encapsulates Hani Abu Asaad's directorial talent in this respect. The spectator senses that Said and Soha are drawn to each other and that there is an element of desire on both sides, but Said seems too preoccupied to respond to this.
The tempo picks up when it is revealed that Said and Khaled have been planning a suicide operation in Israel for some time and that, following Said's contact with a man named Gamal, the operation is imminent. Unable to sleep on the eve of the operation Said drops his guard and goes out early in the morning just to see Soha, an expression of what appears to be the only desire that connects him to life.
The director does not discuss the value of suicide operations or their legitimacy as a form of resistance in any direct way but instead capitalises on Soha's quasi-European background. She, at least, is allowed to express her opinion on the subject, if only briefly. First she tells Said that there must be some way of resistance other than suicide, and then, after the two's first operation is aborted, reiterates her position to Khaled. When Khaled responds that they are willing to give up their lives for the sake of others, and will thus be rewarded in heaven, Soha asks the would-be suicide bomber how he knows that heaven exists, a question that shocks Khaled into invoking God's forgiveness.
The film traces the ways in which individuals are recruited to carry out suicide operations. Gamal, the coordinator of the operation, tells his commander Abu Karem that he has been watching Said and Khaled for two years. The two young men, then, are not part of any resistance movement but ordinary people and much of the film's strength lies in the manner in which it plots their transformation into determined suicide bombers.
Early on, especially during the first attempt when they are on their way to Tel Aviv, Said experiences some hesitation and asks, as Soha does, if there is no other way to conduct resistance. We find out that Said's father had been killed for collaborating with the Israelis and that he himself becomes suspect when the first operation fails, all of which reinforces his wish to carry out the second operation. Khaled, on the other hand, who had started off with dreams of being rewarded in heaven, begins to feel less sure.
The final scene in the film is particularly powerful. Said thrusts Khaled into a car that will take him back home while he remains in Tel Aviv to take the bus that transports soldiers (this being the second shot in which soldiers are portrayed). Paradise Now ends with a close-up of Said's eyes which then fade into whiteness, confirming that the young man is intent on his suicide bombing.
Few Palestinian, or for that matter any other Arab, films treating the Arab-Israeli conflict, avoid sacrificing artistic quality to ideological and political sloganeering. Hani Abu Asaad deftly avoids such pitfalls and pulls a seemingly impossible task, creating a portrait of two suicide bombers with whom audiences can empathise.
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