Boaz Yakin, 1994.The film is a cliché 90’s urban ‘hip-hop’ drama with a distinctive twist, the protagonist is a twelve-year-old chess prodigy. Michael, whose nickname is Fresh, is an unassuming drug dealer that lives in a Brooklyn housing project. He lives in two drastically different realities. On the one hand, he is a typical healthy well-adjusted teenager, who spends his days goofing around with his friends, eating chocolate bars, and flirting with girls. On the other hand, he is well-known drug runner revered on the streets for his quick thinking and high intelligence. Sporadically throughout the film, Fresh meets with his father (Samuel L Jackson) for a game of chess in the park. During which he imparts snippets of parental wisdom between bouts of harsh scolding over unwise moves. For a while Fresh seems to manage his two separate lives. However as he gets deeper in the game, they begin to merge, bringing his school friends and family in danger. When his schoolyard crush is accidently murdered, he decides he wants out, devising an intricate plan to free him and his sister from the streets. One that includes sacrificing his friends and double-crossing essentially everyone he knows.
On the surface, the film is not great. It is not even good. The story is stale and uncreative. Most of the characters are incredibly annoying, with the exception of Samuel L Jackson. However, beneath the surface there are signs of intelligence. The idea that a game of chess is a metaphor for life, while simplistic, does give the film hope. Playing chess teaches Fresh to think multiple steps ahead of his opponents, to have redundancy in his plans to be able to adapt to new situations. In the game, the ultimate goal is to kill your opponent’s king, using your pieces as means to achieve your end. In the case of Fresh, the objective is survival for him and his sister, everyone else is just a means. In the case of his father, the game is a symbol of inner struggle, playing both sides of the board in an ongoing game that has lasted more than 20 years. When Fresh visits his father’s trailer, he remarks that he is losing the game against himself, to which he shrugs in acknowledgement. After the visit, Fresh decides to set up a similar game, playing both black and white pieces. In reality, playing both sides seriously would divide the self and likely result in a mental breakdown. However, as a metaphor in a film, it works. At the end of the story, Fresh knocks over his King to symbolize checkmate. He realizes that in this game there are no winners, and that by playing it he has ultimately reduced himself to level of his opponents. The final scene, which unbefitting to the overall atmosphere of the film, is quite beautiful, showing the young man sobbing uncontrollably as he sits down to play a game of chess with his father. While you will likely never see a ‘Criterion’ release of the film, it is a surprisingly intelligent and is definitely a ‘diamond in the rough’.
The film is distinctively Canadian, characteristically Québécois, in the sense that it mixes English (Hollywood) and French (European) influences, a common theme in the country’s history and culture. It combines a high degree of intelligent content common to many French films with a cohesive and entertaining structure found in many American films. As a broad generalization, the latter is primarily entertainment driven, which they do very well, and content is secondary. While in Europe, it seems that the reverse is true. Films that rely too much on the content often lack any entertainment merit, verging on pretentiousness and becoming a bad cliché. Watching a dialogue centering on some philosophical abstraction can be interesting intellectually, but is likely not very entertaining. Entertainment value is extremely important to film. It is what keeps the audience engaged. It makes films fun to watch. It is what generates millions of dollars in revenue and keeps the industry running. Conversely, many films that are extremely entertaining, lack substance. The viewer quickly forgets about the film. It does little to expand their conscience, raise questions, or promote discussion. Very few directors can successfully balance both sides, especially when trying to make an economically viable project.
‘Incendies’ is one of the rare examples that get the balance right, resulting in an amazing film. It exudes intelligence, taking a stance on the perversity of ideologies, recanting a modern interpretation of a famous Greek tragedy, and exploring the geopolitical climate of the Middle East, all while being incredibly entertaining. It is interesting that all the towns and countries in the story are fictional. Although, the film hints that it takes place in Lebanon at the start of the civil war. The story is applicable to anyone of the countless countries in Central or Southwest Asia that plagued by sectarian conflict over the past fifty years. By not pegging the film to a specific place or event in history, it makes a broader philosophical statement about the dangers of ideologies and continued senseless violence associated with them.
Speaking to the entertainment merit of the film, at no point in the story is the viewer ever disengaged or disinterested. The discomforting nature of the subject matter coupled with the disturbing images from the civil war keeps the audience captivated and eyes glued to the screen. Besides the content, the scenes constantly jump between suburban Montreal, rural Lebanon, and various other unnamed locations throughout the Middle East, recanting moments from the mother’s past and the children’s present. This sensory juxtaposition of revolving landscapes at different points in time helps further engage the audience and create a well-paced narrative. The director also uses music, notably Radio Head’s song ‘You and Whose Army?’, to help build tension at key moments throughout the film. The melodramatic song progressively builds to a breaking point that fits the emotion of the film perfectly. It is undoubtedly one of the best pairing of popular music and cinema, although the song would work well in almost any film. These elements, the combination of intelligent content, spectacle and entertainment, are what make ‘Incendies’ such an incredible and arguably the best Canadian film ever made.
From a popular culture perspective, the films significance is undeniable. Black leather jackets, dark washed jeans, and motorcycles are still symbolic icons of ‘cool’. There is even a rumor that ‘The Beetles’, the most popular music group of the century are named after the rival gang and a popular modern American blues rock band credit their namesake to the film. From a cinematic perspective, there is not much to the film. The plot is timid and predictable. The acting, with the minor exception of Brando and Marvin, is lukewarm. However, the subtle cultural differences are what make the film interesting. For example, the BRMC all love listening to jazz, which is interesting because It is difficult to associate jazz with motorcycle gangs. Stereotypically one thinks of outlaw bikers listening to heavy metal or similar high intensity music coupled with violent lyrics. Conversely, jazz is associated with a high level of musical erudition, requiring a refined ear to understand the order and complexity behind the chaos. However, at that time there was no Rock and Roll. Elvis Presley only walked in to Sun Studios to record his first single in August of that year (1953). There was only the blues, which although would later evolve into rock, lacked the energy essential to fuel teenage angst. Conversely, Jazz had the required intensity and tempo to match the teenage libido. It was unruly and unpredictable, essentially a perfect soundtrack for misguided and rebellious youth. The resulting images of rowdy outlaw bikers wearing black leather jackets drinking beer and dancing to avant-garde jazz make the film so unique and interesting to watch. Besides the music, being able to understand the countless cultural references associated with the film, make it worthwhile to watch.
What is interesting about the film is that it has common elements from both western and film noir genre. Sturges obviously borrowed the suspense, plot, and style of the film from the latter. The black suit, the dark secret, the unresolved murder, the fedora are all classic elements of the stylish crime dramas. This classic uniform is in contrast against the clear blue desert sky and dusty pale hues the town throughout the film constantly reminding the viewer of the genres’ influence. However, there are many elements from the Wild West mixed in, which is not surprising given the directors history of westerns (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven). Symbols characteristic to the genre, including a drunken powerless sheriff and a local strong man who decides what is right and wrong are present in the film. That is the whole point of Westerns, that they are primitive. These societies do not define morality by laws or creed but by whoever is quickest with the gun. One cannot depend on the government to always protect and coddle them. They have to fend for themselves, by any means necessary. It is very American. It is why John Wayne is such a potent and everlasting symbol of American culture. This combination of the two greatest genres in American Cinema make the film such a great classic to watch.
Films like Lilja-4-Ever are difficult to write about because of the severe nature of the subject matter. How can someone recommend a film about child sexual exploitation, where teenagers sniff glue and commit suicide on screen, because they thought the film’s narrative was well done or the sound track was interesting? Ultimately, one must judge the film within its context to determine if the content is justified. They must determine whether the director successfully matched the brutality of the images and story with the seriousness of the subject matter. If it is unbalanced in either direction, the film is an epic failure, especially when handling extremely controversial topics. While it is true, that the director could have had much of the truly disturbing scenes take place take place off camera and retain the potent message of the film. The fact is that humans have become so desensitized to disturbing images that artists need to resort to new depths of depravity to get our attention. Moodysson does this very well, almost too well. The scenes in the film get progressively more brutal to the inevitable conclusion, bringing out so many raw emotions in the audience that range from hate to compassion and are impossible to ignore. Maybe that is why we like films like this, or at least like them enough to warrant their creation, because we find them cathartic. Maybe seeing how fucked up someone else’s life is or can be, makes us feel better about our own relatively minor problems and the social context is just an excuse to evade censorship. Regardless, the way Moodysson creates a universe that is completely tragic and utterly devoid of any hope to bring attention to a real and grave injustice speaks to the power of cinema.
