thomas4cinema

“Paradise Now” has caught some attention around the … Berlin festival? Or was it Cannes? In any case: as it is one of those typical festival films, you really have to take a note to keep hunting it down, in your local train-station-turned-into-arthouse cinema or – more likely, unfortunately – through the DVD mail order service. Here it is, I am glad I have not forgotten about it, because it is a pretty well-done film.
You have to be seriously one-eyed to be offended by the fact that the suicide murderers of the film start out as regular guys, quite nice guys, actually, and that their evolution into terrorists is shown as a process that comes quite natural if you have suffered enough oppressions. This is done exactly done the same way in Ken Loach’s “Barley” film, and in a bit more elaborate (and maybe less souvereign) form by Salman Rushdie in Shalimar the Clown.
So the film follows the two friends down that road, observes them do some kind of reversal of roles.
I would not say that this is a masterpiece of a film, but it is definitely a solidly performed and directed narraryion that allows those of us for whom the regional conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a very abstract tv event to get closer and get a stronger believe in its reality.
Plenty of Reviews: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445620/externalreviews