One thing about French Canadian people that you need to know is that we love our stand-up comedians. We're crazy about them. In fact, we love them so much that we give them jobs as talk show hosts, politicians and often as movie stars. The most popular movie genre in French Canadian cinema is the big, fat comedy that features one of our beloved stand-up comidan in a lead role. Some of these movie turn out just fine (one of our most iconic comedies just got the Hollywood treatment), but you know, there is a lot of terrible stuff being made. Our brightest star of filmmaking would be Denis Villeneuve, who has taken Hollywood by storm last year, with movies about Jake Gyllenhaal wrestling with his emotional issues. How did Villeneuve find his way to Hollywoodland? His golden ticket was a little powerhouse called INCENDIES, who got nominated for the Oscar of Best Foreign Movie in 2010. It's the king of movie that'll wreck your day and that'll make you say ''thank you'' for it.
INCENDIES is based on a stage play by Wajdi Mouawad. After the passing of their mother Nawal (Lubna Azabal), twins Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) receive two letters from notary Lebel (Rémy Girard), their late mother's boss. One is adressed to their dad, who they thought to be long dead and the other is adressed to their brother, who they didn't know existed. Nawal doesn't want a headstone on her grave until Simon and Jeanne delivered these two letters. They will travel to Lebanon and back, looking for a family they didn't know they had and digging up their mother's buried secrets. They are going to find out who their mother really was, every reason behind her wild behavior and it's going to hurt. A lot. There is nothing nice to dig up from a civil war.
It's difficult for someone who hasn't lived through war to understand hatred. It's an emotion that's often confused with anger and rage. I've never been even remotely close to war, but I thought INCENDIES portrayed hatred in a very striking way, which I thing is as close as cinema can get to the real thing. The flashback scenes that feature moments of Nawal's life during the civil war have some powerful displays of heartless violence that will freak out the most hardened viewers. Hatred is that cold resolution that makes you do horrible things to people without batting an eyelash, because you're convinced they don't deserve to live. INCENDIES has some pulverizing, gazing-into-the-abyss scenes where hatred and death are illustrated in all their complexity and horror. The bus scene (featured on the cover) is going to cause some major damage. It's the kind of scene that you can't unsee, that shapes your understanding of things a little better. Fuck, I could write an entire blog post on that scene.
INCENDIES is a HARD movie. It's not difficult per se, Denis Villeneuve's filmmaking is as fuild and seamless as ever, but it's a film that want to fuck you up. I love when movies jump at my throat like this, but sometimes INCENDIES is trying a little too hard. It's not a major problem, it's isolated to two or three scenes, but I thought it drained some transcendent power out of it. I call that issue 'harvesting tears''. It's when a scene has no point in the movie whatsoever but trying to squeeze tears out of you. The opening sequence for example, which is renowned for being haunting, features children getting their head shaved and going to war...wait for it....wait for it...ON A RADIOHEAD SONG *. The sequence contains one importat detail that is later revealed in the movie, but the entire point of it is to look in the child's eyes and squirt a tear. It's the first scene of the movie! I have agreed to watch a movie about civil war in Lebanon, it's the kind of thing I expect to see. It's not going to move me right off the bat. It's not going to be moved just because it's a child going to war because it's an eventuality I was prepared to see when I pressed PLAY.
Anyway....
Why should you step away from your busy schedule of Hollywood blockbusters to seek a depressing foreign movie? Well, first of all, I'm pretty sure INCENDIES is better than whatever movie you feel like watching right now. The characters are fascinating and profound and Denis Villeneuve's cunning camera work gives them all the lattitude they need to reach out to you, not unlike the characters of PRISONERS. Also, INCENDIES shows things that are rarely show in movie theaters. Hatred is exactly a nice thing to witness, but it serves a purpose in Villeneuve's movie and by the time the credits roll, you feel like you've done something valuable with your time. That you've acually learned something about the world. I'd go as far as to call INCENDIES a cinema classic and an important war movie. It's going to make you rethink the way you're watching bullshit nationalist propaganda war movies. I was lucky enough to never experience war, but after watching INCENDIES, I feel like I know a little bit how it goes.
* Major Radiohead hater here.
Anyway....
Why should you step away from your busy schedule of Hollywood blockbusters to seek a depressing foreign movie? Well, first of all, I'm pretty sure INCENDIES is better than whatever movie you feel like watching right now. The characters are fascinating and profound and Denis Villeneuve's cunning camera work gives them all the lattitude they need to reach out to you, not unlike the characters of PRISONERS. Also, INCENDIES shows things that are rarely show in movie theaters. Hatred is exactly a nice thing to witness, but it serves a purpose in Villeneuve's movie and by the time the credits roll, you feel like you've done something valuable with your time. That you've acually learned something about the world. I'd go as far as to call INCENDIES a cinema classic and an important war movie. It's going to make you rethink the way you're watching bullshit nationalist propaganda war movies. I was lucky enough to never experience war, but after watching INCENDIES, I feel like I know a little bit how it goes.
* Major Radiohead hater here.