February 9, 2011: Incendies
Canada’s Oscar-nominated entry for Best Foreign Language Film is a gripping and heartbreaking story of a woman’s children forced to come to terms with her past, after she is gone. Incendies is nicely structured, keeps its audience guessing, and delivers a devastating revelation at the end. I found it to be a worthy nominee and a tremendous film in its own right, and while the ending seems like a bit of a narrative cop-out to me, I have to forgive it because the setup is so well-crafted.
In contemporary Montreal, a lawyer brings together a brother and sister following the death of their mother, to read her will. The mother has written cryptic letters to each of them, telling one to go and find their missing brother, and telling the other to go and find their missing father. The news that they have a brother is a shock, and they had also long-assumed that their father was dead. The sister pursues her mother’s wishes with gusto, travelling into the middle east to discover her mother’s rocky past, but the brother resists. Eventually he is forced to join in, and the two could never have imagined what they would find on the path to discovering these two missing members of their family.
The film is lengthy, but that’s because it has a complex story to tell about a whole lifetime, and each new discovery leads to more and more questions about their mother’s past as well as renewed amazement at the strength she mustered in the face of the terrible things she lived through. When the brother and sister eventually learn the truth about their family, they are dismayed but at the same time appreciative of the closure that they didn’t know they needed.
I shouldn’t say much more about the film, except that the subject matter (shootings, bombings, rape, death of children) is harrowing and difficult, which might impede its appreciation by some viewers. Incendies is a world-class film which, as I say, relies on a not-uncommon resolution, but the depth of the story it lays out leading up to that conclusion gives it the right to utilize this particular device. It’s a rewarding viewing experience if you can deal with the subject matter.
Impressive and engrossing Canadian Oscar entry.
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