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#670 - Incendies
Denis Villeneuve, 2010
After their mother's death, a pair of twins are made to unravel her dark and troubled past in the middle of the war-torn Middle East.
Man, this Villeneuve guy really doesn't like making nice movies, does he? I've only started to watch his films this year, but so far he's made movies about subjects as harrowing to watch as child abduction, the war on drugs, and evil doppelgangers. On the surface, Incendies almost sounds like it could have been an easier watch but I obviously knew better than to expect anything easy from Villeneuve. Incendies focuses on the adult twin children of a woman named Nawal who has immigrated from the Middle East (it's not specified exactly where and the cities mentioned by name tend to be fictitious) to French Canada. Nawal has recently died and the public notary for whom she worked has summoned her children Simon and Jeanne to read Nawal's last will and testament. Her final wishes request that her children deliver two letters that she had written; one is to be delivered to their father, while the other is to be delivered to their brother. While Simon stubbornly refuses to go through with it, Jeanne obliges and so the film divides into two storylines. One follows Jeanne as she travels to the Middle East with the intention of delivering the letters, while the other traces Nawal's tragedy-filled journey through the incredibly harsh reality of life during wartime.
I thought Incendies was going to be something special right from its opening slow-motion scenes set to the anguished crescendo of Radiohead's "You And Whose Army?" (which admittedly did undercut a later scene that also featured the song). The premise proves solid enough as the naturally-opposed twins must deal with a side of their mother that they never knew even as the film shows in excruciating detail what kind of ordeals she had to face in the old country; the first flashback scene shows Nawal's husband being gunned down by her brothers as part of an honour killing, and her troubles only get worse from there. This arguably proves to be the more obviously interesting storyline as it involves Nawal enduring hardship after hardship such as giving up her newborn child, bearing witness to acts of religiously motivated genocide, and so forth. The scenes are frequently painful to watch even when Villeneuve opts to use discretion and cuts away from more heinous acts such as rape or child-murder. The present-day storyline doesn't involve anything nearly as graphic, though scenes where Jeanne hears first-hand accounts of what happened to Nawal can frequently prove to be as emotionally lacerating as any straightforward depiction of shocking material. That's definitely effective enough to carry the film as it heads towards its conclusion - however, the build-up is handled so well that when it finally piles on reveal after reveal, it's easy to think of them less as shocks than as thuds because there is no way that the reveals could measure up to the established atmosphere (even if they do make sense within the narrative).
Outside of the story's debatable tightness and varying levels of discretion, Incendies proves a technically decent film that can wring some uncomfortable levels of tension out of some unlikely scenarios. Villeneuve's eye for strong cinematography is evident here even without a distinctive veteran like Roger Deakins behind the camera, plus the ways in which he stages external action are still full of considerable suspense (such as one scene where a group of young boys try to make their way down a bombed-out street while avoiding sniper fire). I definitely respect the ambitious nature of the storytelling, though it is undercut by the fact that it isn't concluded all that well. It's weird when you watch a film and understand that its conclusion is quite simply the most logical and understandable progression from the rest of the narrative yet still can't help but feel a little underwhelmed. Otherwise, it's a solid film with generally good performers who can sell individual moments well and accentuate the script's strengths. I wouldn't automatically think of this as my favourite Villeneuve film, but it does come awfully close as it showcases the horrors of war (both secular and religious) and the effect it can take on untold generations in all sorts of unsettling manners.
Denis Villeneuve, 2010
After their mother's death, a pair of twins are made to unravel her dark and troubled past in the middle of the war-torn Middle East.
Man, this Villeneuve guy really doesn't like making nice movies, does he? I've only started to watch his films this year, but so far he's made movies about subjects as harrowing to watch as child abduction, the war on drugs, and evil doppelgangers. On the surface, Incendies almost sounds like it could have been an easier watch but I obviously knew better than to expect anything easy from Villeneuve. Incendies focuses on the adult twin children of a woman named Nawal who has immigrated from the Middle East (it's not specified exactly where and the cities mentioned by name tend to be fictitious) to French Canada. Nawal has recently died and the public notary for whom she worked has summoned her children Simon and Jeanne to read Nawal's last will and testament. Her final wishes request that her children deliver two letters that she had written; one is to be delivered to their father, while the other is to be delivered to their brother. While Simon stubbornly refuses to go through with it, Jeanne obliges and so the film divides into two storylines. One follows Jeanne as she travels to the Middle East with the intention of delivering the letters, while the other traces Nawal's tragedy-filled journey through the incredibly harsh reality of life during wartime.
I thought Incendies was going to be something special right from its opening slow-motion scenes set to the anguished crescendo of Radiohead's "You And Whose Army?" (which admittedly did undercut a later scene that also featured the song). The premise proves solid enough as the naturally-opposed twins must deal with a side of their mother that they never knew even as the film shows in excruciating detail what kind of ordeals she had to face in the old country; the first flashback scene shows Nawal's husband being gunned down by her brothers as part of an honour killing, and her troubles only get worse from there. This arguably proves to be the more obviously interesting storyline as it involves Nawal enduring hardship after hardship such as giving up her newborn child, bearing witness to acts of religiously motivated genocide, and so forth. The scenes are frequently painful to watch even when Villeneuve opts to use discretion and cuts away from more heinous acts such as rape or child-murder. The present-day storyline doesn't involve anything nearly as graphic, though scenes where Jeanne hears first-hand accounts of what happened to Nawal can frequently prove to be as emotionally lacerating as any straightforward depiction of shocking material. That's definitely effective enough to carry the film as it heads towards its conclusion - however, the build-up is handled so well that when it finally piles on reveal after reveal, it's easy to think of them less as shocks than as thuds because there is no way that the reveals could measure up to the established atmosphere (even if they do make sense within the narrative).
Outside of the story's debatable tightness and varying levels of discretion, Incendies proves a technically decent film that can wring some uncomfortable levels of tension out of some unlikely scenarios. Villeneuve's eye for strong cinematography is evident here even without a distinctive veteran like Roger Deakins behind the camera, plus the ways in which he stages external action are still full of considerable suspense (such as one scene where a group of young boys try to make their way down a bombed-out street while avoiding sniper fire). I definitely respect the ambitious nature of the storytelling, though it is undercut by the fact that it isn't concluded all that well. It's weird when you watch a film and understand that its conclusion is quite simply the most logical and understandable progression from the rest of the narrative yet still can't help but feel a little underwhelmed. Otherwise, it's a solid film with generally good performers who can sell individual moments well and accentuate the script's strengths. I wouldn't automatically think of this as my favourite Villeneuve film, but it does come awfully close as it showcases the horrors of war (both secular and religious) and the effect it can take on untold generations in all sorts of unsettling manners.