I don't expect the film to give me answers, but I hope to get a little inspiration. Unfortunately not.
Dark humor and absurdity permeate the entire story. The casual selection of personnel; the hilariousness of filming; the rush of mission execution; the resistance leader who looks like a loser... Our protagonist is often in a state of blank-eyed, at first stage fright, only to end up with Negative and determined to carry out the task.
Not that dark humor doesn't fit the theme. It is also entirely possible that the suicide attack process exhibits a very profound absurdity. But the problem is that the film is more of a condescending mockery, and what it hopes to present to the audience is not a Camusian absurdity but a Wang Xiaomao comic. Its greatest insincerity is all manifested in the use of a vase-like heroine's pale preaching from the "human rights organization" as the connotation fulcrum of the entire film. A sentence "There are other ways to resist" seems to easily break all the other's beliefs. Oh, it turns out that Hamas and the al-Qaeda are a bunch of losers who are just a little bit horny, just do some psychological counseling. This set, maybe Hollywood is happy to pay for it, I don't believe it.
View more about Paradise Now reviews
