paradise now

Twenty minutes into the film, I finally realised what made it feel so different from normal Hollywood fare: there was no music, and there were no pyrotechnics. There's the sounds of a bomb blast and some gunfire, as well as a scuffle that leads to a bloody nose, but that's as far as the violence goes. It's quite remarkable, considering the film's subject matter.

Ostensibly, the plot follows the execution of a suicide bombing operation carried out by Palestinians against the Israelis. Peel away the surface, however, and there emerges a tale about the value of liberty and dignity, and the extremes desperate men will go through to attain it.

The story unfolding is the Palestinians', as they carry out their resistance against the Israeli soldiers occupying their land. 'How can the occupiers also be victims? When the occupiers also play the role of victims, then we are forced to take the roles of victims... and murderers,' intones Khaled, one of the would-be suicide bombers. 'This (human bombs) is all we have left. If we had airplanes, we wouldn't need bombs.'

And so the reasons justifying violence run. As the camera shifts from the rubble and ruins of impoverished Nablus to the cheerless Israeli army checkpoints - all concrete blocks and stony faces - choking the town, and then to the gleaming glass-and-steel skyscrapers of Israel itself, it's hard not to sympathize. But suffering is one thing, the reaction to it another.

'We shouldn't give the Israelis the moral reason to continue the occupation,' protests Suha against the terrorist tactics. The daughter of a famous martyr, brought up in France, she runs a human rights group, pursuing an alternative course of resistance against the hated occupiers. 'If it wasn't for your father, I would kill you,' replies Khaled, outraged at the blasphemy. Israeli soldiers broke his father's leg for fun when he was a child, causing a permanent limp.

Said, his close friend and the other chosen bomber, is less animated. 'I have no other option,' he says with a hint of sadness, because his father was executed for collaborating with the Israelis, and this is his only shot at redemption. As the camera fades on Said, strapped with explosives, sitting in a packed Israeli bus, the last shot we see is of his eyes, already remote and lifeless. In that moment, the tragedy becomes clear: on the road to freedom and dignity, legacies are the greatest shackles.