San Antonio Express-News · San Antonio, Texas · 4 March 2006

CP-2006-007

Emotion Pictures

Will the controversial ‘Paradise Now’ grab Oscar gleam, or will the message of human unity in ‘Joyeux Noel’ win out?

James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

Transcribed from the clipping

“But a furor is starting to erupt around another movie, ‘Paradise Now,’ nominated as best foreign-language film. The film is obscure (director Hany Abu-Assad is not a name heard much around Hollywood), and it hasn’t made much money (barely more than $1 million), but the topic is red hot: suicide bombing in Israel. The tagline of the movie declares, ‘From the most unexpected place comes a bold new call for peace,’ and the film is nuanced and ambiguous. Still, it’s hard to refute the argument that it humanizes Palestinian suicide bombers. A private group called The Israel Project has led the charge against ‘Paradise Now’; the project this week held a news conference in Jerusalem in which the Israeli father of a teenager killed by a suicide bomber referred to the film as ‘Hell Now.’ And the project is running an ad in Variety that asks, ‘Is it right to honor a film that puts a human face on deliberate murders of children?’ That’s a great question, although Hollywood, of course, humanizes murderers all the time. ‘Capote,’ one of the films in contention for the best picture Oscar, puts human — and to Truman Capote, at least, sexually alluring — faces on the men who killed four people in Kansas, including two teenagers, back in 1959. Still, ‘Paradise Now’ might turn out to be too edgy for the Hollywood crowd. The Academy Awarders might not want to vote for the movie some say will encourage more suicide bombers in Israel — and maybe, too, in Iraq. Instead, there’s another foreign film that might actually cleanse some of the blood on Hollywood’s hands. It’s ‘Joyeux Noel,’ and it’s about temporarily ending a war that never should have been fought, World War I… on Sunday Hollywood has a chance to remind us that audiences can be warmed and heartened by what unites us — not thrilled and chilled and bloodied by what divides us.”

Photograph caption

“ABOVE: Hany Abu-Assad, director of ‘Paradise Now’ (center, with cast members Ali Suliman and Kais Nashef) has garnered criticism, but could reap an Oscar… TOP: Then again, so could the French film ‘Joyeux Noel,’ which offers a more uplifting message about the humanity brought out by war.” · Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

Context added by this archive

The organised campaign against the film, reported in a column that argues against it and then concedes the case. A group took out an advertisement in Variety asking whether it is right to honour a film that puts a human face on the murder of children. The columnist calls it a great question and answers it himself in the next sentence: Hollywood humanises murderers all the time, and Capote was up for best picture the same year for doing it to two men who killed four people in Kansas. This is the fifth American notice of this film in the archive, and between the five of them a Palestinian director is told his work is unsophisticated, is cleared of being an apologia, is objected to by a foreign ministry for the country named on his award, and is asked whether his characters may have faces at all.

Cite this item

"Emotion Pictures," San Antonio Express-News, 4 March 2006. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2006-007. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2006-007

Elsewhere in the archive

• Constitution draft refers to Jerusalem as Palestine capitalSan Antonio Express-News · 28 May 1994 · the same newspaper
• Mind-set of suicide bombers covered in Globe-winning filmThe Grand Rapids Press · 20 January 2006 · the same year
• Trying to atone for deadly errorHouston Chronicle · 8 June 2006 · the same year
• Gaza Strip: Israeli air strikesPost Bulletin · 4 November 2006 · the same year