Film examines the Middle East

Ask your average American just what in the hell the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is all about. No. It's not about Iraq. And for something as dreadfully relevant and reported as the fireworks over the West Bank and the Gaza strip, we are horribly uninformed. \n"Paradise Now," from director Hany Abu-Assad, covers something most of the western world is only familiar with from the occasional 30 second clip on the evening news and could stand to know more about: suicide bombing.\nIt's not easy to discuss something that a lot of the world identifies as rationalized murder without offending someone. And undeniably, there are people who won't like "Paradise Now," but it's important to view the film in the right light. Don't go looking for new answers to old questions, because to those most familiar to the conflict, this film is simply treading water.\nIf what strikes the average viewer the most is its message, I'd be surprised. I think what's far more important (and likely to be remembered) is that the viewer will walk out of the theater and be able to put a human face to those grainy images of masked, armed men chanting in a vague, foreign language. Yes, they're "fanatics," members of a Palestinian terrorist cell. But it takes a lot more than flowery rhetoric about the gates of heaven to convince a human being to strap C4 to his chest and go looking for highly populated areas.\nThe film begins by introducing us to Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), best friends and mechanics in a Nablus garage. One of them argues with a customer and is fired -- which was pretty dumb, as there's a dearth of work for young men in the Palestinian refugee camps. As they walk home after work, they hear rocket fire and explosions; but it's just another day in the occupied territories.\nA couple of hours later, they're informed that they've been selected from a list of volunteers to be the next martyrs for "the resistance." They record stirring last testaments that have to be redone when the militant with the camcorder forgets to turn it on. And they get explicit instructions on where to go and how to act from their handler, who answers their wide-eyed question, "What happens afterwards?" with an offhand, "Two angels will pick you up," almost as if heaven were on the cell's payroll, too. \nBut it all rings hollow and halfhearted. After all, the praise and congratulations heaped on the two young men honored with blowing themselves up comes from those who get to fight for this cause without killing themselves; better educated men of better stature who apparently have more of a choices in life than martyrdom or part time at the local garage.\nThe film paints a bleak picture of Palestine's current options (scarily compounded, I'd imagine, by the recent election of Hamas), but still does a fantastic job of identifying suicide bombers as real people with real thoughts and real feelings -- which will make it all-the-more sad the next time you hear about someone who climbs aboard a bus in a Tel Aviv suburb with a bomb under his shirt.