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Thread: Incendies

  1. #1
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    Incendies

    INCENDIES

    Directed by Dennis Villeneuve, Canada, (2010), 133 minutes

    “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes

    Adapted from the play “Scorched” by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies is a film of searing emotional intensity, graphically depicting the brutality of war and the physical and emotional toll that it can bring to a country and its people. Directed by Quebec filmmaker Dennis Villeneueve (Malestrom, Polytechnique) and nominated for an Oscar for best Foreign Film, Incendies is the story of adult twins, Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette), and their attempt to fulfill their mother’s deathbed wishes by discovering their roots and a deeper understanding of who they really are.

    Strengthened by an outstanding performance by Belgian actress Lubna Azabal as the mother, the film is set in both present-day Montreal and the civil-war era in Fuad, a fictitious Middle Eastern country (most likely referencing Lebanon in the years 1975-90). The film opens to the music of Radiohead’s “You and Whose Army?” as young Muslim boys are having their heads shaved as they prepare to become soldiers. As one boy stares into the camera, his eyes speak vividly of his terror. The scene then shifts to Montreal where the will of the twins’ mother, Nawal’s (Azabal) is being read to them by notary and long-time employer, Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard).

    Nawal’s final wishes are that she be buried “naked, no prayers, face down, away from the world,” until her children hand-deliver two letters, one to the father they thought was dead, the other to their brother they never knew existed. As she writes in her will, it is only at the time that “the silence will be broken, a promise kept,” that she can be buried with a proper gravestone bearing her name. Shocked by his mother’s request, Simon refuses to carry out her request but Jeanne agrees, feeling that she owes it to her mother’s memory and to her own passion for the truth. As she heads to the Middle Eastern country where her mother was born, the film alternates, sometimes confusingly, between sequences from her mother’s past and Jeanne’s present day journey.

    Shot in Jordan, the film’s landscapes, supported by André Turpin’s striking cinematography, are starkly beautiful and add to the mystery of the search. What we think we know keeps changing and the drama is always engaging, though at times it can be horrifying. Jeanne visits her mother’s hometown, goes to the university where she studied, and eventually to a women’s prison, looking for any information that would lead her to her father, but her leads do not add up to much. Nawal’s story begins when, at an early age, she is cast out of her Christian home when she becomes pregnant by a Muslim father who was shot to death before her eyes. After spending time in school, she seeks revenge for her husband’s murder and begins her search for the son she gave up at birth.

    Her journey of discovery is not an easy one, either for Nawal or for the viewer. Scenes of ethnic conflict, religious bigotry, and female subjugation are vividly depicted, particularly in a scene where a bus containing Muslim women is ambushed and set on fire by militant Christian soldiers as the drum of background music covers the screams. Becoming a revolutionary and a political prisoner after her participation in an assassination, Nawal is held in solitary for thirteen years and, because of her singing in her cell to cover her pain and her refusal to break despite being tortured, she became known to everyone as “the woman who sings.”

    Jeanne’s search continues fruitlessly until her brother Simon and the notary Lebel arrive to provide important contacts as the film moves towards a startling final revelation. Though the scenario may be implausible and the actors portraying the twins have no physical characteristics indicating their Arabic heritage, these factors did not get in the way of my involvement with the story. Incendies is a family drama, an abiding mystery, and a visceral cry against the insanity of war. Despite the traumatic violence it shows, it is a powerful, disturbing, and lyrical film, ending on a note of forgiveness and reconciliation and bringing us to a place of transcendence.

    GRADE: A-
    "They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey

  2. #2
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    A Canadian theatrical release? This was shown at Telluride and Toronto. Listed for US release in April. US DVD expected but of course not available now.

    This will be included in the New Directors/New Films series at Lincoln Center in March so I will probably see it in the ND/NF press screenings.

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    Release

    Yes, it has been released in Canada this past week. No DVD available as yet to my knowledge.
    "They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey

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    DVDs are rarely released during a theatrical release time. But on Netflix they list it as coming. Howver sometimes those depend on the whim of the distributor.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    DVDs are rarely released during a theatrical release time. But on Netflix they list it as coming. Howver sometimes those depend on the whim of the distributor.
    I think it's worth seeing. It might even win Best Foreign Film, though they'll probably pick something innocuous.
    "They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey

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    As I said above somewhere,


    This will be included in the New Directors/New Films series at Lincoln Center in March so I will probably see it in the ND/NF press screenings.

    I almost certainly will.

    If you refer to the Best Foreign Oscars, they are usually off-the-wall.

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    I finally watched INCENDIES. Well worth watching. I waited a couple of months to watch it knowing it would get a re-run at the theater where I work. The film is definitely involving. It creates a certain tension and sustains it. I was won over, perhaps too soon, by the opening scene in which a camera enters a ramshackle structure and finds a coterie of boys having their heads shaved. The long take ends when the camera finds a boy staring into it and zooms in. He is Abou Tarek if you want, retrospectively, to connect the opener to the story. You may opt to think that the boy is the face of innocence about to be violated by power, greed, and religious extremism.

    (Spoilers)

    There is a modern, "art house" sensibility that coexists awkwardly with that commercial impulse to cram too many newsworthy, violent incidents and dramatic turning points into a movie. Howard correctly raises the issue of implausibility. I am thinking that the flaw mostly resides in the casting of the roles. In particular, no way the actor playing Abou Tarek in the present is old enough to be the father of the twins. If you decide to use the same actor to play "the mystery character" in scenes at least 20 years apart, then you need to "age the actor" with make-up. There may be other continuity problems beside the narrative over-reach I mentioned. And yet, as a whole, Incendies is easy to recommend. It has a lot going for it. Those tracking shots! That scene in which Simon asks Jeanne if 1+1 can equal 1 and she "gets him", as my kids would say. The emotional power of a number of scenes is devastating. And the bracketing of the film with the business about a dead mother's letters ends up working quite well from the point of view of narrative construction and in the enactment of a moment of transcendence, as Howard says.

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    Chris, I remember reading your review but don't know where. Would you link us to it here? Thanks.

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    I should have put a link in this thread earlier. As I mentioned above in this thread, INCENDIES was part of this year's New Directors/New Films series in April at Lincoln Center (in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New York) so my review is in that thread in the Festival Coverage section. You'll find it here.

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    Thanks. Nice review. One minor correction: Nawal doesn't die at age 69, as you state. She was 59 or 60 since her gravestone displays the years 1949-2009.

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    Thanks. I'll fix that.

  12. #12
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    I'd be interesting to checkout his two early features, which you mentioned. I remember seeing Maelstrom, in which a talking fish is the narrator/commentator. It's available on DVD. I managed to track down a rare, Chinese-issue, English-subtitled DVD of August 32nd on Earth, bought it, and somehow never watched it! I will very soon.

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    Hmm yes, probably it would be interesting. And by the way I should not have said Best Foreign Oscars "are usually off-the-wall." The final choices can be off but some of the nominations are always fine. And I guess you Oscar liked the last winner though I didn't so much.

    Netflix has Maelstrom. Polytechnique the list as "save."

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