Paradise Now

Recommended by a friend, I went to watch Paradise Now (It was already nearly a month ago, though...)

You can see the trailer of the film here.

I think the director deals with this highly controversial and politically sensitive subject in a best possible way. As one of the comments put on IMDb says, i can hardly imagine how anybody who had actually seen this movie could assert that it "glorifies" anything, whether the use of violence or the spirit of "political martyrdom".

This is a film about Palestinian young men who are recruited for a suicide mission. Two life-long friends and automatic mechanics Said and Khaled, living in the West Bank of Palestine, are one day commanded to carry out a bomb-attack in Tel Aviv, an Israeli big city.

What makes me like this film is that the story is illustrated not in a noble pathetic tone but actually in a comedy-touch, especially in the first half of the movie, of course in a black way though. I watched the trailer of this movie afterwards but felt that it was edited too dramatically. The entire atmosphere of the film itself is more cynical and calm, and therefore it makes the audience think.... (the intro of the official site is better)

One of the scenes I like is the one where Khaled makes his farewell speech in front of a video camera. Impressed to leave his own voice as a heroic martyr (at this point he believes that by carrying out the mission he becomes a hero, while the movie camera sees the belief a bit ridiculous), even trembling, he sincerely, but a bit awkwardly, declares the cause of the attack and what he is dying for. Then, just after he finished his solemn speech, he is told that the video camera was not working. The men taking the video were nibbling pita sandwiches, not concerning at all about his last speech.

According to Aristotle's analysis, a plot of tragedy is used to represent a superior, serious story that arouses a feeling of awe towards the object of the story. This film surely avoids employing that kind of rhetoric of conventional tragedy --- but by so doing it succeeds to humanise the two protagonists. Said and Khaled are not especially pure and noble figures, let alone monstrous fundamentalists, but ordinary, sometimes a little bit naughty men.
They don't even interpret the mission is religiously motivated. As Said talks to himself in the story, the attack is against nothing but the occupation of Israeli State and Israeli Army, and perhaps the social, political, economical oppression attached with them. The name of God comes up on their lips several times, but it does in such a natural way that we imagine being thankful to God and pondering the relationship between the self and God may have become their everyday habit and custom.

However, I understand there is a voice that the message against violence is not still enough.
Although the heroine character argues that killing civilians makes no change but to lead a chain of violence -- she even shouts the heaven Khaled say to go after the completion of the mission exists only in his head -- the terrible direct result of the attack is not clearly suggested in the movie. But I'm far from thinking this point makes the entire movie worthless.

I hope this powerful movie will be released in many places in the world -- how about in Japan?