Paradise Now

I went and saw Paradise Now at the walker with . It was supposed to be a Humphrey event, and at least 3 other Humphrey people were there. We scattered through the audience due to lack of contiguous seating, though.

Paradise Now is a movie about Palestinian suicide bombers. It portrays its subjects as people. It tells a mostly realistic story. For that, unsurprisingly, the movie’s maker says he has received criticism in both Palestine and Israel. One wants firm, strong heroes. The other wants loathesome monsters.

It’s an uncomfortable movie to watch. There isn’t much blood, guts, or gore in the movie. But it displays the emotional depth and extent of the conflict felt by the characters in a convincing fashion. Also, much of the movie is set in Nablus in Palestine. To people accustomed to the United States, the conditions there can serve as a bit of reminder that the rest of the world isn’t all like this. I recommend it as food for thought.

The Q&A after the movie was a little ugh. The guy is a moviemaker, not a policymaker. The people they had start off the Q&A were foreign relations and policy people, and of course, went off on their own several-minute expository lecture before asking a question that was at best tangentially related to their lecture. But that’s the norm when it comes to questions in this or similar sorts of environments.