Incendies (8.6/10)

Denis Villeneuve, 2010.
The film is a rare masterpiece of Canadian cinema. Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, about how we can never escape our past and eventually have to account for our actions regardless of how far we try to distance ourselves. At the final bequest of their late mother Nawal, Jeanne and Simon Marwan must deliver two sealed envelopes to their unknown father and brother. Simon dismisses the request as crazy, but Jeanne decides to travel to their mother’s place of birth to find out more about her. There she learns that her Mother was once a beautiful and bright student activist, who transformed into a radical revolutionary, terrorist, and infamous political prisoner before coming to Canada. In parallel with Jeanne’s search, the story recounts Nawal’s life and tells how her family forced her to give up her child for adoption. In desperation, she decides to find her son, taking her through the heart of a religious civil war. The violence she witnesses drives her to join the revolutionaries, who entrust her to assassinate a high profile political leader. After the murder, she spends the next 13 years in a high security prison. Learning about her mother’s past, Jeanne persuades her previously skeptical twin brother to join her quest. Together, and with help from their Lawyer, they delve deeper into the past uncovering dark secrets about their lost brother and mother. Eventually they learn the disturbing truth about their family and in a bizarre twist of fate the final piece of the puzzle brings them back to Montreal.

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.