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Newsday · Long Island, New York · 28 October 2005

CP-2005-004

A Mideast ‘Paradise’ apocalypse

Gene Seymour, Staff Writer

A Mideast ‘Paradise’ apocalypse — Newsday, 28 October 2005
Newsday · Long Island, New York · 28 October 2005

Transcribed from the clipping

“PARADISE NOW (PG-13). Two Palestinians (Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman), friends since childhood, agree to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Director Hany Abu-Assad’s hyper-realist film is provocative, chilling and tense, even after it’s over. With Lubna Azabal and Amer Hlehel. 1:30 (some vulgarisms). In Arabic with English subtitles. At select theaters… ‘Paradise Now’ walks a narrow tightrope in trying to make sense out of what many regard as senseless behavior. Even making the film required the nerves of a high-wire artist. It was shot in the West Bank city of Nablus where director Hany Abu-Assad had to deal with both the Israeli army and Palestinian citizens. However tense the filmmaking process was, it could scarcely be any more wrenching than the story being told. It’s about Saïd (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), who have been friends since childhood, growing up as Palestinians under Israeli occupation. They work as auto mechanics for low wages, filling the empty hours between shifts smoking a hookah and drinking tea. Their lives seem so numbingly nonextraordinary that it’s hard for anyone, especially them, to imagine what could give such lives meaning. Maybe it’s the pretty young customer (Lubna Azabal) who’s attracted to Saïd on first sight. But before he and she can get to know each other better, a professorial-looking man named Jamal (Amer Hlehel) offers Saïd and Khaled a chance to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv… The movie weaves debate over tactics, ideology, belief and existence into the airtight framework of the plot. If Abu-Assad is a high-wire walker with the movie’s issues, he also shows a safecracker’s poise with building tension and teasing suspense. As a visceral experience, ‘Paradise Now’ chills and absorbs, wearing down one’s resistance to its subject matter. It is in no way an apologia for terrorism. But it’s a character study that subtly nudges the viewer toward greater understanding.”

Photograph caption

“Kais Nashef as Saïd and Hiam Abbass as Saïd’s mother in director Hany Abu-Assad’s ‘Paradise Now’”

Context added by this archive

The second American review of this film in the archive, printed the day after the first, and both reviewers feel obliged to take a position on the same thing. One calls showing Palestinians as unimpeachably normal a terribly unsophisticated argument. This one assures readers the film is in no way an apologia for terrorism. Six Palestinian actors are named between the two notices, including Hiam Abbass, who plays the mother.

Cite this item

"A Mideast ‘Paradise’ apocalypse," Newsday, 28 October 2005. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2005-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2005-004

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2005-004.

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