"No" to "Paradise Now"

Last week the movie "Paradise Now" started in German cinemas. This critique in Germany's daily WELT (translation: Richard Bartholomew) pretty much sums up my feelings. I will post more on the subject next week.

A Jaundiced Look at a Sympathetic Figure
Suicide bombers are really good people: Alan Posener: The disappointing film "Paradise Now"

Said is a suicide bomber in Nablus.  Long trained for this job, he and his friend Khaled don't hesitate a moment when their organization's leader announces they've drawn the winning straw and will be allowed to stage a double mass murder the next day in Tel Aviv. (...)

The next day the friends start out and although Khled gets cold feet at the last moment, Said goes through with it and blows himself up with a bus load of jews.  Mission accomplished.

So much for the plot of the German-Dutch-French co-produciton "Paradise Now". (...)

Hany Abu-Assads film is the first fruit of the "World Cinema Fund", the mutual film sponsorship of the Berlinale and Federal Cultural Foundation.  The evangelical film jury names "Paradise Now" as the film of the month because it invites the viewer to "think about the assasin's motives".  Amnesty International distinguishes it with its peace prize because it's neither "lecturing nor moralizing". That's true: Noone in the film says that it might morally wrong (and not just politically conterproductive as Suha claims), to mass murder the innocent.

Most German critics praise the "sophisticated" presentation.  Well "Paradise Now" is certainly "sophisticated" compared to the hate soaked anti-semitic propaganda films that play every evening on TVs in every arabic country.  Sure it's "sophisticated" compared to the videos that Hamas, Hisbollah and Co. produce. (...)

As Said begs his commander for a second chance, he finds the words that Europeans miss so painfully in the communiques of the terrorists.  Words that speak to the heart - just like Saids' gesture speaks to the heart not to board a bus carrying a sweet israeli child.  That's how they are, these murderers: actually good people.

But the film doesn't show Saids'deed: Women without abdomens, men without heads, children without arms and legs, blood and guts in seats, burned pieces of flesh all over the place.  Nothing about that: After panning past Saids' eyes the screen becomes bright and white and pure.

At the 55th international film festival in Berlin 2005 "Paradise Now" won the Publikumspreis ("audience award") and the Blue Angle for the best European film.

It makes you want to scream.

Comments

[Eg]

David,

Here's some good news if it proves true: Schroeder to resign

The BZ newspaper in Berlin, quoting unnamed sources close to the Chancellor, said Schroeder would use the October 3 German Unity Day public holiday as a dignified backdrop to stand down.

[Pi.]

One is inclined to recall the Tale of Two Cities film covering the French Revolutuion from many years ago. It also detailed the reasoning behind the sacrifice of a person's life for what he believed in - allowing an aristocrat to escape the guillotine as a result - and ended with a quick glance at the man's eyes before the camera swung up towards the clear blue sky ...

Pi.

[kid charlemagne]

Why does your sub-heading read "Alan Posener's disappointing film..."? Alan Posener wrote the review, he didn't make the film.

Note from David: Apologies - my fault. Corrected it.

[FranzisM]

When this movie about a fictious suicide bombing in Tel Aviv was released at the Berlin film festival last February, it took only five days until Islamic Jihad staged a real suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

[Sock Puppet of Doom]

Europe fails it once again. Sick, very sick. The Moonbats here will love this film as well. We are in for a hard slog in this struggle against terror.

Europe is losing it's knoweledge of cause and effect. Accepting or trying to understand the motovations of evil is self defeating. The evil rubs off on you. You accept it. You become it. Knowing it's evil is enough. Resisting it is the only proper thing to do.

[Steven Den Beste]

Rotten Tomatoes has six reviews currently linked for this movie. Five of them are positive.

[Elmo]

I'll take SDB's 'blank' comment as a sympathetic virtual scream.
Not to fear David. In cyberspace we Can hear you scream.

No one said any of this was going to be easy. So, the thrill of the blogosphere has worn off a lil bit? BFD. When we die, we will die knowing that we tried. Success? Failure? No matter. For in trying, we have succeeded. We can only point the way, and ask hither wordsmiths. Take up the battle, it need be won.

[Elmo]

Ignore the typepad knucklehead/noob .....
"I'll take SDB's 'blank' comment as a sympathetic virtual scream"
It just looked like the 'field' was empty. Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah :-)

[Tom Penn]

I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for this illogical alliance between the god-hating Left and islamofascist terrorist freaks. The only commonality that I can decipher is an insatiable appreciation for the mass murder of innocent people. Still, does the left not hate all who believe in God?

I would be interested to know how the movie portrayed the crazy Islamofascist god-speak required to indoctrinate, brainwash and derrange a human mind toward genocidal fanaticism. In Leftist doctrine, I understand that all Christians are fundamentalist neo-con nazis, but somehow islamofascist terrorists are romanticized? Can someone please reconcile this for me? Mr. Den Beste?

[SeanM]

@Tom Penn, "I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for this illogical alliance between the god-hating Left and islamofascist terrorist freaks."

I have not seen the film, but one serious candidate is Nihilism. If you haven't read it already you could start with this link. The article is free, you just have to click through.

"The inner nature of this nihilistic terrorism is that everything is permissible, whether because God exists and I am his representative, or because God does not exist and I take his place."

Another candidate is shared anti-Semitism along with support of the Palestinian cause. It is happening on American campuses as well and raises serious concerns for the future.

[Toby]

@ SeanM

"Another candidate is shared anti-Semitism along with support of the Palestinian cause. It is happening on American campuses as well and raises serious concerns for the future."

Are you referring to the "Columbia Unbecoming" controversy ? You must be an alumnus. Just curious.

[SeanM]

@Toby, "Are you referring to the "Columbia Unbecoming" controversy ? You must be an alumnus. Just curious."

Yes, I am thinking about the ongoing controversy at Columbia. For a number of reasons I am even more disturbed that it is happening at that particular institution.

[Doughnut Boy Andy]

Die Jüdische has a special page on the film and some reports on the protests that are going on against it:

http://www.juedische.at/TCgi/_v2/TCgi.cgi?target=home&Param_Kat=44

Its all in German though but informative if you speak the lingo!

[Steven Den Beste]

Tom Penn, the leftists see this as a fulfillment of Marx's prediction of an uprising of the proletariat.

Lee Harris explains it. The key term is "global immiserization".

[Toby]

@ SeanM,

do you know of any recent developments regarding "Unbecoming" ? Or the arab rampage at Columbia in general ? Last thing I heard was the near outbreak of a fistfight in Lerner Hall started by palestinian students trying to prevent the showing of the movie "Road to Jenin" (a response to the palestinian propaganda flick "Jenin, Jenin") on campus. But that was last April.

if you ask me, Bollinger has been a failiure in the whole affair. what do you think ?

[SeanM]

@Toby, "Bollinger... what do you think ?"

Forgive me, but I currently live in Germany. I imagine in your wanderings between NYC and London that you would know more of Bollinger than I would. When I was in the neighbo(u)rhood, Michael Sovern had just taken the office of President, not Lee Bollinger.

From a distance, I have noticed that the same problem is "infecting" many US and Canadian campuses. In ten years or so, we may look back and realize that we are today in the midst of a campus revolution, more like that which transpired in 1870-1910 timeframe than the late 1960's: among other causes, $60/barrel oil is going to have many effects.

[SeanM]

@Steven den Beste

Thank you, I read the link you provided and found it a mostly well constructed argument, although not always as tight as I would like. But then, what in the social sciences would be? I believe the opposite is the case.

"Whether the immiserization thesis [that the third world has been robbed to make the US rich] is true or not is simply too complex a topic to deal with here. Indeed, for the sake of the present argument, I am willing to assume that it is absolutely true"

Let me just assert here for completeness, because Lee Harris does not, that it is demonstrably false that the US by its trade or military has robbed any nation. Otherwise we would have to assume that some other nation would be materially richer today if the US were poorer.

"...indeed, it is quite evident that further attacks would continue to unite the overwhelming majority of the American population, creating an irresistible “general will” to eradicate terrorism by any means necessary, including the most brutal and ruthless."

Although I agree with his argument, what if America's hands were tied by a future administration that aligned its legal structure with that of the EU (ICC, Kyoto,...) and the American people were as leaderless as Europe's are today? It might only take four more years.

[SeanM]

@Steven den Beste (Sorry, previous post placed "I believe the opposite is the case." at the end of the wrong paragraph)

Thank you, I read the link you provided and found it a mostly well constructed argument, although not always as tight as I would like. But then, what in the social sciences would be?

"Whether the immiserization thesis [that the third world has been robbed to make the US rich] is true or not is simply too complex a topic to deal with here. Indeed, for the sake of the present argument, I am willing to assume that it is absolutely true"

Let me just assert here for completeness, because Lee Harris does not, that it is demonstrably false that the US by its trade or military has robbed any nation. Otherwise we would have to assume that some other nation would be materially richer today if the US were poorer. I believe the opposite is the case.

"...indeed, it is quite evident that further attacks would continue to unite the overwhelming majority of the American population, creating an irresistible “general will” to eradicate terrorism by any means necessary, including the most brutal and ruthless."

Although I agree with his argument, what if America's hands were tied by a future administration that aligned its legal structure with that of the EU (ICC, Kyoto,...) and the American people were as leaderless as Europe's are today? It might only take four more years.

[Steven Den Beste]

Sean, there's no telling what the future will bring. But I don't think you should worry too much about that prospect. In 1997, for instance, the US Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel "sense of the Senate" resolution which basically said no way, no how to the Kyoto Accord.

It passed unanimously, 95-0. As to the ICC, I don't think there's a lot of enthusiasm for it on either side of the aisle either. (For one thing, it contains provisions which would violate the US Constitution.)

A "future administration" has to work with a future Congress. We don't live in a dictatorship, and it really does take more than four years to turn the ship of state around and ram it onto the rocks.

Nothing in politics is impossible, but I'm not worried about this particular prospect.

In any case, that wasn't the point of the Harris article. What he was trying to demonstrate was that European anti-Americanism is based on a fantasy ideology and that it isn't even supportable on its own theoretical terms, let alone making any sense when checked empirically.

Tom asked why European leftists would applaud the Islamists, when the Islamists are so vile and when they seem to stand for everything that European leftists oppose.

The answer is that European leftists have been blinded by their utter all-consuming hatred of capitalism and it greatest successful practitioner, America, and greet anyone who opposes America as an ally, no matter who they are and how vile they may seem to be.

But there's actually a similarity, deep down. Both the Islamists and European leftists view America as a living heresy. For Islamists, they hate our embrace of secular government, religious tolerance, and individual liberty.

For European leftists, we're also a heresy, only the religion is Marxism. Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse due to a revolt of the proletariat, but it's obvious now that's not going to happen here.

In both cases, the problem is that their religious revelations say we should not be so powerful (compared to them) and that we should collapse rather than becoming more and more powerful and influential. By existing, we cast doubt on their religious revelations -- but religious revelations cannot be false. The result is cognitive dissonance and incoherent rage, directed at us.

The religions are vastly different, but the rage is the same. America is heresy just by existing.

[Barri]

Funny, I thought Amnesty International was fundamentally against capital punishment, yet they sympathize and praise this film! Two Arabs suicide [die] because two of their number were killed by Israelis? OK, as long as they take many innocent others with them? You tell me, Amnesty, where your values have gone...

As for Germans, Dutch and French funding a film about murdering innocent Jews en masse, words fail me...

[SeanM]

@Steven Den Beste, A "future administration" has to work with a future Congress. We don't live in a dictatorship, and it really does take more than four years to turn the ship of state around and ram it onto the rocks

I'd like to believe you are right, but I did not just mean in regards to Kyoto or the ICC. Nor did I mean that the "ship" will crash in four years, but that a different administration (imagine if Kerry had won, or a Hillary 2008 victory) would hasten the slow giving away of sovereignty. Consider how Kerry or Hillary would come down on the UN's attempted takeover of the internet, for example. Depending on the mid-term outcome next year, we could see pressure to be more supportive of UN initiatives sooner. Think it's far-fetched? Consider what is happening in the UN's Biotech deliberations right now, and that is under a Bush administration. Make no mistake, there are tremendous pressures on the US to submit to the will of the international community.

As far as I can see, many of these UN initiatives are not based on logic, the biotech scandal being the most prominent example. The US must distance itself from the attempts of the UN to blow out its original charter into becoming a world government. If we don't, then I see it as inevitable that we will eventually succumb to what others already imagine us to be. Returning to the conclusion of the link you provided, I repeat: what if America's hands were tied by a future administration that aligned its legal structure with that of the EU and the American people were as leaderless as Europe's are today? To which you answer that our Congress will prevent that. Sure hope you're right and I cautiously await what they will do to this biotech mess.

[SeanM]

In case anyone in the US is confused about why we should be cautious of advice coming from Europe, consider Mark Steyn's latest piece in the London Telegraph:

"Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet."

We have to understand clearly what we mean by tolerance before we enter this debate. And we must find our own way.