Well, Paradise Now, the story of Said and Khaled, is out in theatres now. I saw the trailer before Capote, and was intrigued, mostly by the tagline which ran along the lines of "Sometimes, courage is marked by what you don't do." This isn't to say i see eye-to-eye on its promotion here, but I find it interestring how much film is emerging from the Middle East right now.

Right on the heels of Walk on Water, here seems to be another story about "moving on in life," as Said meets and begins a romance with a beautiful woman right when he and his friend are "called" on to initiate a terrorist strike in Tel Aviv. The two best friends live in the West Bank (so the release of this film already feels a tad more dated) where they live in poverty and violence (still true regardless of the pull-out).

I got free screeners for this today at 7 pm, but had class. :-( So I'm waiting until this weekend to let you know what I thought.

Anyone else heard/seen anything about this film yet?

Well, I saw it today. While i would never not advocate checking out a movie that touches on this topic, I have to admit I'm a bit dissappointed. Movies that try to break new ground often don't have a precedence, and can be failures even in their success at picking away at the iceberg.

But my final feeling on Paradise now is that some topics are best left explored, not explained, and Hany Abu-Assad made the error of walking the second route rather than the first.

At least half the Arab critics didn't like it. They said the movie didn't show us the motives of Said and Khaled. That's why I was very surprised by the great reception it had in the US. Hopefully, I will see it in June 06 when I attend the Arab film festival in The Netherlands.

Yeah. It wasn't very exploratory.

I'd venture to say (please don't quote me on this) that most critics here supported it on idealogical positions. That they would be afraid to condemn a movie on this subject, which in theory tries to expound on conditions that breed violence. They may be called closed=minded, or any slew of other nagations of their insight. Its often hard to seperate what a director is trying to acheive from what (s)he actually does. This is one of those cases. I almost felt bad marking it so low, as I did The Corporation, and many other movies. It has no precedence, so I didn't expect something smooth and seemless. But I was hoping for more of a struggle. Instead, Paradise Now just came off a bit of a surface treatment with a a couple one liners that were Crash-worthy obvious. Crash, by the way, is another movie that had what could have been interesting components, but that completely fell apart once they were all pulled together.

Both movies are explaining histories and atmosphere rather than exploring them. Though Paradise Now is a bit more subtle, creative, and focussed. It still didn't really transcend its thesis statement, however.

I hadn't realized it was poorly received by international critics? On what other arguements?

I saw it today and I was both impressed and dissapointed.

I think you are correct in your point though that it is hard for many critics to give a bad grade to the film. I think the problem was that, like you said, it just didn't dig deep enough in to the lives of Khalid and Said. While it had an amazing ending (in my opinion) and was one of the heavier films I've seen of late, it didn't give me enough to connect to the story.

Ultimately, I'll give it a B-, a bit better then you.

Watched it a couple days ago.

I actually liked that it didn't get bogged down in the politics of the matter. It's quite restrained in its treatment of the subject, and it's never too didactic.

Though I do agree with dolce that what it does end up saying is nothing groundbreaking and ultimately just a bit too simplistic.

I wouldn't have given it a nomination.

B-

I just saw it. I agree with the comments in this thread. The topic is very difficult to handle and very touchy, so I admire the ambition of the filmmakers. However, they weren't entirely successful. I found the movie pretty compelling at times, especially in the first half. I just had this feeling of sorrow and dread during almost the entire film...feeling pity for the characters and about the way they were being manipulted.

However, there was just not enough motivation presented for Khaled's and Said's actions. Their characters were shallow and that hurt the movie in the second half. At first, it seemed that Said was the one doubting the whole thing...but then, all of sudden he changes, while Khalend changes his mind after some sloppy short argument in the car with the girl. That just didn't come across as very believable.

I liked that they had the whole movie go on without music, even when the credits rolled. Gave the film a more harrowing sense. The ending was very predictable (in that it would end with a bright white light, I saw it coming long time before it ended, hehe).

It is a decent effort, but as I said, the characters didn't have enough depth and weren't explored well enough. The changes were not believable and thus stole the credibility from the ending.

B-/C+