Incendies movie is based on the 2003 play of the same name by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad. In Montreal, twins Jeanne and Simon are given two letters by the notary following the death of their mother Nawal Marwan. A letter must be given to their father whom they never knew and believed to be dead and another one to be given to their brother whom they did not know existed. Hence, begins the twins’ quest for their origins, unveiling along the way the life-altering secret of their mother.
The Plot: A Faithful Adaptation, Not So Faithful
Those who have read the play will know what I’m talking about. The movie follows the same pace and follows the journey of Canadian twins (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) who discover the life-altering secret of their mother following her death (Lubna Azabal).
In an undisclosed war-torn middle-eastern country (Lebanon, Mouawad’s country of Origin), the story of Nawal intersects with that of her children as they try to piece back together fragments of their mother’s life while searching for a missing brother and a dead father.
The story begins when Nawal Marwan, a girl from a Christian family, is forced to give up her first son, Nihad, at birth because he was the result of her relationship with a Muslim. Marked on the right foot with three vertically aligned dots as a distinctive sign, the child is then placed in an orphanage, where his mother promises to come and look for him, once she will have completed her studies. But the war was too great and Nawal was too late.
If you have read the play, you know that the movie is missing an essential element but that’s what’s interesting for the readers because they discover the story in a whole new way.
Villeneuve’s Depiction of Violence
If you’ve seen any of Denis Villeneuve‘s past works, you know how intense and heightened the violence generally is. But here it’s an entirely different case.
Villeneuve draws, raw and measured performances from the three leads of the film, emphasizing the grief, the confusion, and the anger of each of its characters. Although Azabal stands out in the movie, Villeneuve’s depiction of violence turns her into a completely different character.
As we plunge deeper into the film, we realize that the violence is not necessarily the violence of the war, but an emotional one inflicted on the characters of the film, whether in the detachment of the mother from her son at the beginning or in the internal conflict that the twins are facing throughout the movie.
What I love most about Villeneuve’s vision is that it succeeds with a masterfulness to depict the poetry present in the play (which is the second part of a four-play project “the blood of promises” about the idea of Origin and one’s quest towards one’s past). The promise which sheds blood, the promise of a mother to come back for her child, and the promise of the twins to honor their mother’s wish, hold the essence of a tragedy.
The tragedy hence is not the finale of this intense story but the tension between the thin lines of life and death, the promises kept and those betrayed. Violence becomes the reigning character of this story, that unfolds its characters while trying to break down its secrets.
L’incendie du Bus
One of the movie’s best scenes if not the best, from a storytelling and technical point of view, is the one involving a massacre on a bus. The scene stands out as a devastating echo to a real-life event that involved the murder of Palestinian refugees in the Ain el-Rammaneh district of east Beirut in 1975 at the very beginning of the 15 years Lebanese civil war.
For a Lebanese like me, the scene is more than haunting. Villeneuve’s lens of intensified hyperreality broke all the rules of depiction of such events where I felt like I was watching a documentary about the war. Villeneuve’s unsettling camera work and Andre Turpin’s vivid cinematography will destabilize you.
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Why is Incendies is still relevant today?
Because Villeneuve’s screenplay does not name Nawal’s country of origin and the war at the time, “Incendies” emphasizes the personal impact of all wartime strife on subsequent generations. We as Lebanese are still living in the debris of this war, hoping that one day the anguish, grief, and wrath of our ancestors will fade away but as one veteran tells Jeanne when she gets closer to the truth:
Sometimes, it’s better not to know.
or maybe it’s better to let go.
Incendies doesn’t shy away from showing the trauma nor does it shy away from revealing the brutal truth. It tells the story of successive “fires” that started with birth and ended with a death, where hatred was the common ground but as the film depicts is the series of “Incendies” enough reason for hatred?
I can’t help but mention this bit from the play which still haunts me to date but that perfectly summarizes both films and play
Nothing is more beautiful than being together.
Those are the words of Nawal Marwan, the mother to the son, the father and the twins. At the end of the day all violence is a birth of hate but what if the violence was the product of love as well?
Watching the film, you would be completely absorbed by its story, and bear witness to Villeneuve’s crude depiction of a tragedy, you’d be left gasping for breath.
It carries a quite unsettling story that resonates with today’s world, that would show them the real power of a promise.
One plus one makes two, it cannot make one.
The above is quoted by Simon towards the end, the words that will remain with you, along with Jeanne’s poignant expression (you’ll know what I’m talking about). Confusion, pain, violence, denial, anguish, and surprise are what summarizes the movie but isn’t it also what all wars are about?
Written by – Elissa El Khoury
Check out the trailer of Incendies Movie here:
Incendies
Pros
- Extraordinary Direction
- Outstanding Screenplay
- Brilliat performance by the cast
Cons
- Some might find it slow
