O Paraíso Deve Ser Aqui

Maybe the best response for an absurdist situation is to reflect back that same puzzlement. I suspect the "p" word puts off many viewers who want to watch a film without too many arguments. The idea that some kind "Buster Keaton persona" could be present at so many bizarre situations without launching an obvious rant of some kind is a tidy conceit.

Most of the time - that stance works. It does get stretched a bit thin as the locus moves from Nazareth to Paris and New York. Apparently Montreal was a location too but that wasn't obvious. That may have been intentional.

The film maker appears to be asking us to makes some comparisons between international scenarios and the Palestinian politics. There is very little spoken dialogue in the film itself.

I liked the music and the general keystone cops sequence in Central Park but some of the other sequences are a bit more cryptic. On the whole the film does a great job of setting expectations and then flipping them for comic effect. Some of that comes across as self parody.

There are genuinely funny moments. I saw this at a film festival and I was delighted by it. It did make me think some more about the absurdity of the modern media and the milking of outrage rather than the more important discourse that we never quite get to.