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Directed by
Steven Silver, Andrew Quigley
Starring
Galila Bugala, Michal Biazi, Aiman Kabha, Shani Avitzedek,
Rahamim Zidkiyahu, Mohamad Al Ghoul
Steven Silver and Andrew Quigley's documentary looks
beyond the headlines to the much broader impact of a suicide
bombing in Jerusalem
On June 18, 2002, a suicide bomb tore through bus 32A
in Jerusalem, killing 20 and injuring over 50. The documentary
Diameter Of The Bomb traces the explosion's ripple effect
through two communities locked in mutual anguish, while
offering in its own dialectic form a model for something
like a solution to the endless horror.
Anatomising the event from all angles, the film reveals
the workings of the Hamas outfit that planned the bombing,
of the police force that raced (in vain) to prevent it,
of the firemen, trauma doctors, forensic examiners and
religious volunteers who together clean up the damage
left by the bomb, and of the Israeli Secret Servicemen
who "target killed" or incarcerated the terrorist
cell responsible. Most of all, though, Diameter Of The
Bomb focuses on the friends and family of the victims,
and, by allowing them to give voice to their grief, rage,
love, hate, hope and despair, shows how, long after it
has been detonated, a bomb's shockwaves continue to reverberate
through different people's lives.
The interviews that director Silver and his production
team have compiled are extraordinarily compelling and
wide-ranging, but their real impact derives from the manner
in which they have been arranged. Here implacably opposed
viewpoints are artfully juxtaposed, as the comments of
Palestinians and Israelis, perpetrators and victims, semi-autonomous
terrorists and state-sponsored killers, are all thrown
together and mixed up in a semblance of the kind of direct
dialogue the region so sorely needs. No wonder that the
film's editor, Andrew Quigley, became a co-director, so
integral is his work to the film's delicately even-handed
approach to ideology.
This kind of thing has been done before in Basque Ball
(2003), Julio Medem's defiantly balanced account of the
conflict between Spain and the Basque separatist movement;
and just as Medem was fiercely, if unfairly, criticised
for (supposedly) suggesting a moral equivalence in the
sufferings of the families of both ETA terrorists and
their victims, there will also no doubt be those who take
exception to the way in which Diameter Of The Bomb airs
the viewpoints of the suicide bomber's family and (surviving)
co-conspirators alongside those of his many victims, and
even treats the bomber himself as just another victim
- so much so, in fact, that it is a while before it becomes
clear that the promising 22-year-old law student seen
in home videos and praised for his loving nature by all
who knew him is in fact the perpetrator of such an atrocity.
Diameter Of The Bomb pulls no punches in describing in
horrific detail the devastating effects of the bomber's
act on the flesh and bones of the dead and the psyches
of the living (and the still of the bomber's own disembodied
face lying flat on a bloody street is a difficult image
to erase), but by portraying the bomber himself (and Israel's
elite assassins) in a rounded way, the film both defuses
the unconstructive demonisation that both sides of the
conflict tend to impose on one another, and opens up,
however artificially, a conversation between two groups
with inveterate grievances who rarely come together. As
the father of one victim, himself an Arab-Israeli, puts
it, "the solution is to sit down together and talk."
Diameter Of The Bomb ends with the BBC's news coverage
of the bombing. This is the 'official' perspective through
which most of us come to know of such tragedies; but,
seen in the wider context that this multi-faceted film
provides, the bare news report resonates so much more
deeply, as testimony to blood not just spilt, but mingled,
in a broad community of suffering.
At the end of Rana's Wedding, his 2002 film about a young
Palestinian woman frantically evading Israeli checkpoints
to get to her wedding on time, director Hany Abu-Assad
used an excerpt from the Palestinian activist-poet Mahmud
Darwish: "Under siege, life is the moment between
remembrance of the first moment and forgetfulness of the
last." In Paradise Now Abu-Assad is still under siege,
and this time exploring the circumstances that lead to
two Palestinian friends becoming suicide bombers. Whereas
his previous work (notably Rana's Wedding and the same
year's Ford Transit) depicted the daily humiliations of
Palestinian life under Israeli occupation with a mischievously
upturned eyebrow, Paradise Now provides a discomfortingly
intimate view of the conflict: it is an act of remembrance
suffused with bitterness.
The film had a troubled production: it was shot largely
on location in the West Bank town of Nablus at the height
of the recent intifada; one of Abu-Assad's location managers
was kidnapped by Palestinian militants; and his crew were
repeatedly caught in the crossfire of gun battles between
the Israeli army and Palestinian militias. So it is something
of a triumph that it has made it to UK screens at all.
Given its highly contentious subject matter (some 250
Israeli civilians have died in suicide attacks since January
2001), it is all the more remarkable for emerging as a
deeply humanistic and compassionate work that avoids moralising
or dogma. Best friends Saïd and Khaled are first
shown passing their days working in a local garage, smoking
shisha and sipping lukewarm coffee while looking out over
their rambling town; the sound of distant gunfire punctuates
their conversations. There are no visceral explosions
or battles to signify the ongoing conflict, but rather
mirage-like wisps of smoke in the background. The approach
is indicative of all Abu-Assad's work, which favours subtlety
over didactic bludgeoning.
Then, after this seemingly innocuous beginning, Saïd
and Khaled are recruited by an unnamed Palestinian group
to carry out a suicide mission in Tel Aviv. When Saïd
takes his new and last employer Jamal home for dinner,
his mother is quick to don her headscarf: the gesture
is a silent yet unmistakable nod to the man's faith. But,
bravely, Abu-Assad does not invoke religious fervour as
the reasons for Saïd's readiness to die. Whereas
Syriana showed vulnerable youths being recruited as suicide
bombers by an insidious brand of Muslim fanaticism, in
Paradise Now the trigger is more personal: Saïd's
father was killed by his own people for collaborating
with the Israelis; fundamentally, however, Saïd holds
the Israeli occupation responsible for his father's death.
The personal is made the political in the most emphatic
manner.
For all the undoubted gravity of the dramatic situation,
the director still allows himself moments of unexpected
humour. In one scene, Khaled records his last will and
testament, AK-47 and chequered kuffiyah held aloft in
iconic revolutionary mode, only to have the gravity of
the moment repeatedly interrupted by a malfunctioning
video camera, his own desire to tell his mother where
to buy cheap water filters and assembled militants noisily
eating sandwiches in the background. Messy reality collides
with the solemn business of myth-making.
Some critics have seen in the character of Suha, the affluent,
western-raised daughter of a respected Palestinian martyr,
the voice of reason: an objective plea for calm amid the
maelstrom of an irrational, unwinnable war. Certainly,
her scene with Khaled when they debate the rights and
wrongs of suicide bombers is the closest the film comes
to a political lecture.
Abu-Assad neither glorifies nor condones the tactic. But
that didn't stop Israeli and US critics of Paradise Now
from campaigning against its nomination for this year's
Oscar for Best Foreign Film; they accused the film and
film-maker of sympathising with terrorism. At the same
time, Abu-Assad has found himself criticised in certain
Palestinian circles for not portraying his doomed protagonists
heroically enough.
If we are to judge the director by the company of his
enemies, therefore, Paradise Now is not an exercise in
propaganda. And the film is most powerful in its moments
of lyrical reflection. As the two young heroes depart
to Tel Aviv (now shockingly shorn of their lived-in beards
and long hair, and baptised into sleek, clean-shaven walking
time bombs), Saïd looks mournfully out of the window
of the vehicle taking them to the border with Israel,
the peaceful hills speeding behind him. It is an unspoken
declaration of regret and longing for a land equally cursed
and blessed, where the sight of a sun-soaked valley sits
in jarring proximity to a smouldering block of rubble.
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Written by: Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer
Director of Photography: Antoine Heberlé
With: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer
Hlehel.
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