[lbo-talk] Paradise Now and Munich

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Dec 27 12:49:47 PST 2005


Yoshie:


> 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

The concept of choice is meaningless in the absence of chance - without a chance there is no choice but pre-ordained trajectories of events. I think you underestimate the role of choice in this film. In fact, its main theme is choice. What starts as "following a herd" - both protagonists being told to be "chosen" for the mission, ends up as a series of choices due to unforeseen events. Both protagonists cross the fence "following the herd," but when they scatter to evade the approaching patrol, they start making choices. Especially Said, who having lost contact with Khaled and Jamal, decides to go back to the Israeli side and carry out his mission, then he decides to abandon it when he has a chance to blow up a bus, but apparently does not want to hurt the kid (albeit we are not sure of his motives) and goes back, then he makes another choice (rather than being "drafted") when he is decommissioned and asks to be given a second chance. Both protagonists started as herd followers and both made choices, albeit very different ones. This is what this film is all about. Assad does a splendid job distinguishing between herd mentality and choice in this film, indeed.

I would also give him more credit for including dialogue instead of action and visuals. This film is about ideas and choices and ideas are usually presented in the form of a dialogue. If the ideas are stale, so is the dialogue. In fact, this film is a favorable contrast with "Sophie's choice" which imho is a sappy melodrama precisely because ideas are reduced to visual and emotional "shots." "Paradise now" addresses the same life-or-death choice, but in a much more thoughtful and analytical way, whereas "Sophie's choice" is basically a sappy tear-jerker.

In fact, the reason the dialog seems flat is because it represents scripted canned speech lacking any depth - from the martyrdom "recitations" to the pathetic excuses Said's invents to "explain away" the choice made by his father - which is an interesting intellectual wrangling - "they did it to my father (as opposed my father chose to collaborate), therefore I make a choice to pay them back and 'exonerate' my father. The flatness comes from the intellectual poverty of the ideas espoused by the protagonists, rather than from shortcomings in the art of filmmaking. If Suha's parts look less flat - even though they appear so to a Westerner tired of liberal platitudes - it is because she expresses them as her thoughts - as opposed to reading scripts - and she manages to convince others. Jamal, by contrast, did not convince anyone, he just herded people to follow a script.

Dwayne:
> In other words, it's all well and good to criticize the
> "culture of martyrdom" and 'herd mentality'
> (because clearly, neither of these things is
> productive) but until the Palestinians' tactical situation
> changes we're likely to continue witnessing this "culture" in action.

I agree with you that suicide missions can be a very calculating and rational strategy, especially on the part of the planners. Finding followers of these plans is a different story, though, and it does depend on the presence of certain cultural tropes. Whether following those tropes constitutes "herd mentality" may be a subject to debate, but the presence of these tropes is what makes all the difference in the world and explains why some societies can recruit volunteers for suicide missions while others cannot (or not as easily).

My point, however, was not abut the use of suicide bombers and politics behind it, but about the film - which as I argue above, is about choice.

Wojtek



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