“From the most unexpected place, comes a bold new call for peace.”
That’s the rosy-eyed, punctuation-challenged poster slogan for “Paradise Now,” a suspense-filled character study of two Palestinian suicide bombers. But that’s not how writer-director Hany Abu-Assad sees his movie, which opens Friday in Chicago.
“Honestly, it’s not my interpretation,” the 44-year-old filmmaker said while in town recently. “My principle is film is for others. When you make it, others have the right to find in it what they think they find in it. It’s impossible to force your idea.”
Of course, when you’re talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you’re going to have as many interpretations as you have people watching the film, which is just as Abu-Assad would have it. He would’ve preferred, however, to bypass the threats, bombings and even kidnapping that marked its filming.
“Paradise Now” is about two suicide bombers living in the West Bank town of Nablus who are called upon to blow up themselves and a bunch of Israelis in Tel Aviv. It’s a simmering thriller with heavy political overtones; you hang on through twists, wondering whether the ever-brooding Said (Kais Nashef) and/or the more gung-ho Khaled (Ali Suliman) will eventually pull that fatal rip cord.
The movie is driven by ambiguity; Abu-Assad is trying to get beneath the skin of two men who might attempt such an extreme act, and he doesn’t provide answers around which you could tie a pretty bow.
Abu-Assad, who was born in Nazareth but has lived for many years in Amsterdam, has an open face and a laugh that operates like a comical shrug, as if to say: What can you do? He knew his movie, which was workshopped at the Sundance Institute, would be a tricky endeavor, but when he decided to shoot on location in Nablus, he didn’t anticipate having to negotiate real-life minefields.
The production was squeezed between Israeli checkpoints (and missiles) on one side and rival Palestinian factions, some suspicious that the film would criticize suicide bombers, on the other. Eventually, one of these factions kidnapped the movie’s location manager, and Abu-Assad wound up contacting Yasser Arafat to negotiate his release. When a landmine exploded 300 feet from the set, the production moved to Nazareth.
Abu-Assad said he’s not sure he would make “Paradise Now” again, knowing the circumstances. “I don’t want to complain, but really I don’t sleep well anymore,” he said. “It’s a difficult experience to live five months in such stress in order to make this film.”
For the record, he’s not ambiguous about blaming the Israeli army for those conditions. “When you are controlling the borders, you are making a big jail, and the people who are making this jail are responsible for the inside chaos,” he said.
Let there be no confusion: “Paradise Now” is the work of a filmmaker who, like many Palestinians, rejects the legitimacy of Israel not only from its 1967 borders but as it was conceived in 1948. Abu-Assad contends that peace will come only when Jews and Palestinians are sharing the entire country equally.
But the movie isn’t really about the Israelis, even if the army’s presence is ever-looming. “Paradise Now” is about the Palestinian characters debating violence vs. non-violence, despair vs. positive action. It’s a debate that, Abu-Assad said, is a constant in Palestinian life. “Every day,” he said. “Every second. In every moment.”
Voice of rationality
The audience’s stand-in character is Suha (Lubna Azabal), an attractive, relatively cosmopolitan young woman who could be Said’s love interest if he weren’t so set to punch his own ticket to martyrdom. Suha, the daughter of a terrorist hero, is the voice of rationality counteracting Said’s fatalism; she just can’t see the point of blowing up a cinema or anything else.
Abu-Assad said he focused on suicide bombers “because we know nothing about them — they have no face. You have to give them their face. You have to understand them in order to know what’s the problem. For me the unknown, the dark, is more scary than to give light and to make something invisible visible.”
The director interviewed bombers’ families as well as the lawyers of some who failed in their missions. The film isn’t overtly critical of its two lead male characters, but Abu-Assad has some fun at the terrorists’ expense, particularly as they attempt to tape a martyr video in which Khaled spouts propaganda to a balky videocamera. The movie also has something to say about a society in which, as a video store clerk notes, these martyr videos don’t sell nearly as well as videos of captured collaborators facing rough justice.
Abu-Assad figures he did something right because he has been criticized from both sides. “The one side, for example, said by giving a human face [to suicide bombers], you are justifying the terror,” the director said. “But the other was saying by giving a human face to holy martyrs, you are insulting them.” He laughed.
“Even extreme Palestinians, they say, `It’s like you are portraying [suicide bombers] as people who have doubts and people who are a little bit weak, and [the film has a] sense of humor, and this is not what we want to see. We want to see strong [Palestinians], they know what they are doing, they have no questions about if it’s good or bad,'” he continued. “But even they admit the film is worth it to watch.”
Actually, “Paradise Now” has been well received since it premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and won three awards, including the Amnesty International Film Prize. It opened last Friday in New York and Los Angeles to almost universally positive reviews (including from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles).
Abu-Assad said he initially figured “Paradise Now” would struggle to gain U.S. distribution, but Warner Independent Pictures is giving it the widest release ever for a Palestinian film; it opens in eight cities Friday and another 45 over the following two weeks.
Laura Kim, Warner Independent’s executive vice president of marketing/publicity, said, “I don’t think anybody did it because they thought it would make tons of money, but we thought it was an important movie, and if it could raise questions and be part of a dialogue, we wanted to be part of that.”
`Different point of view’
As for the slogan, she said the marketing department wanted to communicate that the movie would be offering “a different point of view” from the standard suicide bomber portrayals.
“Paradise Now” even is scheduled to open in Israel next Friday after receiving support from the Israeli Film Fund. “I thought it was going to be very easy [to distribute] in the Palestinian [territory], but it’s more difficult than expected in the Palestinian and easier in the United States and Israel,” Abu-Assad said with a laugh.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that for a film tackling such an incendiary topic, controversy has been minimal. Brooklyn assemblyman Dov Hikind condemned the movie for “humanizing . . . arch-terrorists,” and Britain’s scheduled summer opening was postponed indefinitely following the London subway bombings.
But for the most part, people seem to be debating the film on its ideas and merits. After experiencing such turmoil in making “Paradise Now,” Abu-Assad sounded almost puzzled that his movie hadn’t stirred up more of a storm.
Is he disappointed?
“No, no, no,” he said. “I was scared [silly] of it.”
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mcaro@tribune.com
