> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > > protagonists take responsibility for their own decisions and
> > > choices instead of relying on canned scripts embedded in popular
> > > culture.
>
> Wojtek's rock-hard allegiance to an individualist metaphysic shows
> up in his choice of language here.
To be fair to Wojtek, Paradise Now is a "talky" film, not in the sense that it has lots of dialogues in it (which can be fine, depending on what the dialogues consist of and what the film's genre is), but in the sense that the film has its main characters explain their thoughts in so many words, rather than creating sequences of shots that visually demonstrate them. When what can and should be shown is told in words in a film, the result can make speeches sound canned. To be fair to Hany Abu-Assad, the director of Paradise Now, in most cases, a dialogue is much cheaper than a visual sequence that roughly conveys the same idea, which makes it attractive to a film maker of a very limited budget shooting in a dangerous location.
Abu-Assad (born in Israel and working now in the Netherlands) is scathing in his criticism of the organizers of suicide bombing missions -- most tellingly, Jamal, who recruits Khaled and Said for a mission, is shown eating a sandwich while he has Khaled record his martyr video, and a shop keeper tells Said that videos of collaborators making "confessions" are far more in demand than martyr videos. The director's own position is most likely the closest to Suha's, but he also probably believes that the idea of non-violent resistance doesn't seem to present a viable alternative that delivers the Palestinians from the occupation. If none of the positions presented in the film sounds convincing, as Wojtek correctly notes, that's because all of them have been tried and none of them has worked in the real world for the Palestinians.
I differ from Wojtek in that the fact that Khaled, as well as Suha, is still alive at the end of the film is more a matter of chance than his thoughtful moral choice. After all, if Said didn't hesitate the first time around, Khaled would have probably gone along with it. In his last appearance in the film, Khaled is pushed into a car by Said, who decides to go through with a suicide mission alone. The car drives off, taking the tearful Khlaed away from Said. Khaled is unable to stop Said, and he is also unable to stop the car. We see him clinging to the back window of the car speeding away, from Said's point of view. That's a visual correlative of Khaled's political situation: he survives, for the time being, but he is no more in control of history than Said and Suha are..
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>