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Dec 30, 2014Nursebob rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
After her death Nawal Marwan’s fraternal twins, Simon and Jeanne, come together for the reading of her Will. There is the expected 50/50 split of earthly possessions and bank accounts but then things take a strange turn. Nawal leaves express instructions that her body is to be buried in shame; nude, without a casket, and facing downwards, nor is she to have a gravestone marking the site until “an old promise is kept”. In addition, according to their mother’s further wishes Simon and Jeanne are to deliver two letters; one to their father whom they believed dead, and one to a brother they never knew they had. With only a few documents and a grainy photograph as clues Jeanne heads to the Middle East country (Lebanon, deliberately unnamed) where her mother lived before immigrating to Montreal. Simon, meanwhile, stubbornly refuses to take part in what he believes to be a wild goose chase---or is he more afraid than he’s willing to admit? As Jeanne, and later a reluctant Simon, get closer to a truth more horrible than they can imagine a series of flashbacks involving their mother fills in the narrative blanks setting the audience up for a most distressing final revelation. I must admit to being initially incensed by the film’s ending for it came across as sensationalistic and needlessly exaggerated, but after several deep breaths and a long talk with my friend Nurit I came to appreciate it for the darkly operatic metaphor it was clearly meant to be. Making maximum use of the harsh lighting and stark spaces of his desert locations Denis Villeneuve tackles issues of identity, fanaticism and hatred as we see a country literally feeding on itself in order to sustain its perpetual hunger for war. As tightly edited and relentlessly paced as it is, Incendies’ overall tone struck me as a bit inconsistent however, going from sibling squabbles to warfare atrocities to a surreal poolside encounter that was probably more effective in the initial stage production. Furthermore a soundtrack of anglo ballads seemed out of place when the impassioned strains of a Middle Eastern orchestra would have complemented the story’s decidedly theatrical core far more effectively. Minor criticisms aside, the film does conclude with a softly devastating coda in which letters are read and old wounds are laid bare to the sun, if not exactly healed.