Paradise Now

How can the occupier be the victim?
asks Said, in the closing moments of Paradise Now.

Said and Khaled are walking time bombs. With explosives strapped to their bodies, the two young Palestinians plan to slip into Israel, to execute a suicide mission in Tel Aviv. But as plans go haywire, the two are separated due to circumstances. They both end up running into Suha, daughter of a martyr and human rights activist, at different times and known to both of them. Suha upon knowing their intention, tries valiantly to convince them.

Two conversations from Paradise Now, that make amply clear that there are no easy answers. Or maybe, no answers.

Said tells Suha about how they burnt a cinema hall as teenagers during a demonstration.

Suha asks, Why the cinema?
Said replies, Why us?

While they’re trying to find Khaled, Suha scolds Khaled -
There’s no paradise. Its all in your head.

Only for Khaled to reply -
Its better having a paradise in your head than living in hell.

Towards the end, Khaled persuades Said to abandon the mission as its stupidity and would end up achieving nothing. Said agrees, only to betray Khaled at the pivotal moment, and choosing to go it alone. Khaled and Said, in a metaphorical sense, stand as the two choices available to Palestinians living today.

Paradise Now tries to tell us that there’s really not much of a choice. You can choose to accept humiliation and poverty, thus inviting more oppression. Or use your body as a weapon and blow up people, and allow an excuse for oppression.
In terms of choice, one is no better over the other. Either way, you’re fucked up. Its an endless, vindictive cycle which is beyond control.

Paradise Now is a sensational film – at once touching, haunting and terrifying.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless

Modern movies begin here, Roger Ebert famously wrote in his review of this cult 1960 film that changed the face of cinema forever.

I watched Breathless for the fourth time yesterday in less than a year. The first time I saw it, it did not make a great impact on me. It’s only because directors over the years, especially action filmmakers, have done that sort of thing so many times. I couldn’t see what was so special about it, and I hadn’t watched any New Wave cinema either. Later as I became enamoured with another New Wave film, Truffaut’s masterpiece, The 400 Blows, and began to read on the movement, I realised Breathless’ seminal contribution to modern cinema.

However, it is one thing to admire a film, and quite another thing to love it. I’ve admired the craft and diligence of movies like Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. But they do not evoke the intensity of emotion in me, like perhaps Meirelles’ City of God or that Scorsese masterpiece, Taxi Driver. Breathless, I thought, would forever belong to the former category, of movies I admire but don’t really feel much about.

However, Breathless began to surprise me. I watched it again, about six months after I’d watched it the first time, and began to fall in love with it. And since then, ever since I’ve gone back, I’ve found something new. Its crackling humour and wit, the overriding narcissism of its lead characters and the constant playing with pop culture archetypes make it a hell of a ride every time I see it.

My favourite scene remains the conversation between Michel and Patricia in her apartment. It is a long scene, more than fifteen minutes long. It was particularly praised for using cinema to portray life in a realist sense. And really, it is how two lovers would talk. You don’t feel that they are speaking dialogues, which was precisely Godard’s aim. He famously wrote on the sets, and placed the actors in situations and improvised from there on.

It also brings to the fore, the modern urban existentialist crisis. Both characters are talking about themselves, and in a way to themselves. This narcissism is evident throughout the film, everything being expressed in self-centred terms. Towards the end, Patricia sums it up well – When we talked, you talked about yourself, I talked about myself, when we should have talked about each other.

There are more memorable moments. Patricia, a journalist, goes to a press conference to interview a novelist, played by Jean-Pierre Melville and I find the dialogue here fascinating.

Can one believe in love in these times?
Love is all one can believe in.

What is important in life?
Two things.
For men, women.
For women, money.

What is your greatest ambition in life?
To become immortal, and then die.

And yet other little, endearing moments throughout, the hallmark of a truly great work of art. Breathless’ radical techniques of using jump cuts and hand-held cameras to shoot introduced an entirely different way of making movies. It is amusing to think now that both these revolutionary facets were brought about by necessity. Godard found the movie 30 minutes too long and chopped off anything he found boring, leading to the jump cuts. And the hand-held camera innovation occurred because they didn’t have enough money for sophisticated equipment.

Godard, the daring auteur of the 1960’s, went on to make more great films, like the hilarious Bande a part(1964) and Alphaville(1965).

It would be safe to say though, that Breathless remains the film that defined him. Its the most passionate liaison with his great obsession, the cinema.