“INCENDIES” | Drama
R. 2 hours, 10 minutes. In French and Arabic with English subtitles. At the Mayan.
There’s very little in “Incendies” to give away the fact that Denis Villeneuve’s achingly beautiful, unsettling movie was originally a play.
From its opening image of a young boy somewhere in the Middle East, having his hair shorn by a gun-toting man, the action is cinematically rich and evocative.
The child meets the camera’s gaze so intently that we’re forced to ask — and fear — what that look portends.
Shot in Jordan, “Incendies” is constantly, vividly on the move, like its mother-and-daughter heroines. What the film retains of theater’s rich traditions is a firm grasp of tragedy. When pondering children as burdened by history as twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan, names such as Oedipus and Antigone come to mind.
When their mother, Nawal, dies, her boss, friend and notary Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard) reads Jeanne and Simon her will and hands them two letters. One is addressed to the father they did not know was alive. The
other is for a brother they didn’t know existed.
They are to be delivered.
It becomes clear from the meeting that Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) was a conundrum to her adult children — at times an infuriating one, especially to Simon. For him, her last will is merely a testament to a woman who “played head games.” He is right, in a sense: The demands of the dead upon the living can often be cruel, unreasonable.
So it’s Jeanne, a mathematician trained to puzzle through daunting equations, who does right when she heads from Canada to her mother’s homeland.
What Jeanne learns of this woman whom she and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) knew so little about is astonishing and rending.
Using flashbacks, “Incendies” moves with assured grace between Jeanne’s quest and Nawal’s bitter life. Nawal was forced to give up the brother Jeanne seeks because he was the child of an illicit relationship between Nawal and a Palestinian refugee.
Mélissa Désormeaux Poulin does keen work as the daughter determined to fulfill her mother’s wishes. One scene finds her in a village with women to whom she may be related. They are initially hospitable before comprehending that Jeanne is Nawal’s daughter. Poulin captures the shifts in Jeanne’s mood from hopeful to pained and confused.
Azabal is even stronger as Nawal, the woman who flees her village home for the city and, later, her homeland for Quebec. Her portrayal provides reasons for Nawal’s action, but never excuses.
The award-winning play (performed as “Scorched”) was written by Wajdi Mouawad. Although the playwright was born in Lebanon, he left
it for France and since 1983 has lived in Montreal.
Much of “Incendies” unfolds in an unnamed country undergoing a civil war similar to the one that roiled Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. The tensions between a Christian government and rebels representing a large refugee population of Palestinians are tribal but also exploited.
These conflicts may seem familiar, but they are also disorienting.
Who are the good guys? The bad? Who are those masked men unloading their weapons into a bus? Who is the young sniper picking off even-younger boys making their furtive way home with groceries on a rubble-strewn street? Who is the torturer Abou Tarek?
Learning the “whos” will not entirely resolve the “whys.” But then, “Incendies,” an Oscar nominee for best foreign film, makes the potent and mournful point that this lack of clarity is part of the surly nature of tragedy.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567
or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on
