Paradise Now

Last night I attended a viewing of the movie Paradise Now at Georgia Tech, which is the story of two suicide bombers in Palestine. The movie was followed by a brief lecture and discussion. As you may recall, this movie was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards this past year. The movie was very well made. The acting was excellent, as was the writing, which is amazing considering the danger the crew faced while making the movie: the location manager was kidnapped during filming and six members of the crew quit after a missile destroyed a car yards away from where they were working. These real life difficulties give extra impact to what is happening on screen. You realize that this is not just another movie.

The director insisted that, "the film is simply meant to open a discussion. It does not condone the taking of lives." This hardly kept the controversy away, as you can imagine. However, I do feel that it is an important movie to be shown and a discussion worth having. The movie does humanize the suicide bombers, but the thing we forget is that they are human. The interesting story here, and the almost unbearable sadness, is what leads a man to this. Having an understanding doesn't make the action right, these bombings are still horrible atrocities almost beyond words, but it does lead insight into the problem, and perhaps allows for a path to a solution.

The main point of the discussion that followed the movie was that the narrative of the Palestinian is one that is absent from most American news and discussions, which is true. The entire region is labeled "terrorist" and cast aside. While there are many people and organizations in the region that are terrorists, that do take innocent life, there are many that just want a peaceful solution. The best way to reach this is for both sides to understand the story of the other. The speaker after the movie claimed that no resolution will be made until an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab can reach out to each other in mutual understanding and good will. This sounds nice of course, but the reality is much more difficult. Most of the time it seems that all we can do is hope and pray for peace and stability in the region, for all people, but it should also be our responsibility to learn both sides and educate ourselves on an extremely complex situation.