Firstly, every person who watches this film will have a bias towards one viewpoint or the other. Our job as viewers with this type of material is to be aware of our bias, as well as the bias of the authors of the work. I think that on the whole this is a reasonably balanced work, that points towards some of the factors that cause young men and women to throw their lives away. Not many people will "enjoy" watching this film, but perhaps the best attribute that it has is that it makes people think. That said, one of the more important parts of the dichotomy of the Israel/Palestinian problem that wasn't examined in any detail was the difference between the cultures and the effect that this has on the people living in either culture (though there was a small scene towards the end of the documentary with the youths dancing on the beach).
I applaud the coverage of material that isn't normally presented to American audiences, particularly the voices of would-be suicide killers. Nothing presented would make me believe that what suicide killers do is the right thing, but it does present us with an insight into their thinking, and may go towards answering the question of: "Why do they hate us so much?" One of the descriptions of Paradise did indeed sound like life in the US!
Secondly, and I think fairly importantly, with any film that has subtitles, it is important that those subtitles are accurate and show what people are saying. I speak fluent English, Spanish, French, Italian and Arabic (surprisingly all these languages were present in this documentary), and was able to spot various inaccuracies through omission that were present in the subtitles for these languages. With regards to the translation of the Arabic language (probably the most emotive parts of the film), I thought on the whole even though the subtitles don't translate all the spoken words, they are generally neutral without producing a bias through translation. In such a sensitive topic, I would have opted for more complete translation of foreign languages, but do you want your viewers to read most of the film? One of the faults of the translation that irked me was that in two cases "Muslim" in French was translated to "Arab", which is quite inaccurate. (Not all Arabs are Muslim!) I don't speak Hebrew, and can't comment on how accurate the translation was. Perhaps someone could comment on this.
On the whole, I would say this was a good film. I gave 7/10 because of the problems with the translation, and a lack of coverage of the problem from the Jewish side. It doesn't change my thinking on the subject, but certainly does clarify the thinking of some of these suicide killers.
I applaud the coverage of material that isn't normally presented to American audiences, particularly the voices of would-be suicide killers. Nothing presented would make me believe that what suicide killers do is the right thing, but it does present us with an insight into their thinking, and may go towards answering the question of: "Why do they hate us so much?" One of the descriptions of Paradise did indeed sound like life in the US!
Secondly, and I think fairly importantly, with any film that has subtitles, it is important that those subtitles are accurate and show what people are saying. I speak fluent English, Spanish, French, Italian and Arabic (surprisingly all these languages were present in this documentary), and was able to spot various inaccuracies through omission that were present in the subtitles for these languages. With regards to the translation of the Arabic language (probably the most emotive parts of the film), I thought on the whole even though the subtitles don't translate all the spoken words, they are generally neutral without producing a bias through translation. In such a sensitive topic, I would have opted for more complete translation of foreign languages, but do you want your viewers to read most of the film? One of the faults of the translation that irked me was that in two cases "Muslim" in French was translated to "Arab", which is quite inaccurate. (Not all Arabs are Muslim!) I don't speak Hebrew, and can't comment on how accurate the translation was. Perhaps someone could comment on this.
On the whole, I would say this was a good film. I gave 7/10 because of the problems with the translation, and a lack of coverage of the problem from the Jewish side. It doesn't change my thinking on the subject, but certainly does clarify the thinking of some of these suicide killers.
