Paradise Now

I went to see the movie Paradise Now for class. This movie was about two Palestinian men who are chosen to be suicide attackers. These men make videos saying goodbye to their families, and after being cleaned and having their heads shaved to look like Israelites, the men have bombs attached to them underneath their shirts. After crossing the Israelite border, the encounter guards and are forced to flee, but as they are running they get separated from one another. Khaled returns to the handlers and has his explosive belt removed, while Said is nowhere to be found.

The handlers want to abandon the mission, and they leave their hiding place. Khaled wants to search for Said because he thinks he will be able to find him because he knows him best. After rummaging through the whole town, Khaled discovers that Said ran into Suha, the women Said is in love with, but then Said had to run “an errand.” Upon hearing this information, Khaled rushes to the grave of Said’s father who was a collaborator executed for his actions. Said meanwhile, is about to pull the trigger on his bomb while lying on his father’s grave, but Khaled arrives before he is able to do so.

The two return to the handlers and travel to Tel Aviv to resume the attack. Shortly after arriving, Khaled cancels the attack and Said seems to agree with him. When the car pulls up to bring them back home, Khaled gets in the car, and Said slams the door on him and tells the driver to depart leaving Said alone to carry out the mission. The film ends with Said sitting on a bus filled with Israeli civilians and soldiers debating with himself whether or not he should detonate the bomb.

Although parts of this film were difficult to understand, I enjoyed being able to see the attackers point of view. They believed that if they sacrificed themselves while killing Jews, they would be brought straight to Heaven. This idea was very appealing to the men, but at times they doubted if this would really happen or not. The ending was not what I expected because it was left up to the viewer to decide if Said killed the people or not. I do not believe that Said detonated the bomb because earlier in the film he had a chance to blow up a different bus with Israeli on it, but he decided against it. Another reason for my unbelief is that Said didn’t truly believe that he would be sent straight to Heaven after killing the Israeli, and I don’t think he would risk his life for a cause he didn’t fully believe in.