Suicide Bombers Are People, Too [/] So says a Palestinian filmmaker who's garnering prizes and praise for his new film, "Paradise Now."
By Lorraine Ali / Newsweek / Updated: 3:30 p.m. ET Nov. 11, 2005
Nov. 11, 2005 - Hany Abu-Assad is nervous. In just two hours, his new film, “Paradise Now,” will premier in Tel Aviv. But there’s more to it than just opening night jitters for Abu-Assad. The director is Palestinian, the audience is Israeli, and his film is about the lives and moral struggles of two suicide bombers. “I’m trying to take deep breaths,” he laughs. “But it doesn’t seem to be helping.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a film about terrorists, or freedom fighters (depending which side of the wall you’re on), has shown in Israel. But “Paradise Now,” a film distributed in the United States by Warner Independent Pictures, is one of the first feature films that tries to show the potential killers/martyrs as people. Childhood friends Said (Kais Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) drink tea at work, play and quarrel with siblings at home, develop crushes on women out of their league and discuss such mundane things as water filters with their mothers just hours before they’re chosen by a militant group to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The young men, who reside amongst the rubble, rocket fire and curfews of a Nablus refugee camp, face the most intense 48 hours of their already tough and heavy lives. Things get more complicated when Suha (Lubna Azabal) enters the picture. Her father died carrying out one of these attacks, and she’s determined to end the occupation through peaceful means. Together, the three spin the moral compass in all directions. [Ain't moral relativism grand!]
Just before the Tel Aviv opening on Thursday, Abu-Assad says he’s pleased with the reaction he’s received on the film. It’s won an Amnesty International Award, a Blue Angel for best European film and is now Palestine’s official entry for the Academy Awards (this is only the second year Palestine has been allowed contribute to the Oscar’s foreign film competition). It opened in New York and Los Angeles two weeks ago to glowing reviews in The New York Times, and Abu-Assad was featured in interviews on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times. [all the usual suspects] But he knows his toughest audience is right there in his homeland. “There were some Palestinians who wanted to see these characters as superheroes, as almost inhuman in their great powers,” says Abu-Assad, 43, who was born in Nazareth but now lives in Holland. “There were also those—Europeans, Americans, Israelis, whomever—who wanted to see these characters as evil monsters. Again, as inhuman. But that’s not what this film is about. They are human, [Could have fooled me.] they have hearts, brains, lungs. They are strong and weak—and it’s in those weak moments that they are the most human.”[...] [My ellipses and emphasis.]
The Nazis, Fascists, Communists, and Tojo's militarists were human too.
But it made it easier to stop them, when we did not dwell of that obvious fact.
