Film: Incendies (2010)
Oedipal War
I don’t feel like I can shake off this film. I watched it yesterday and vivid snippets of it keep haunting my mind, which I’m sure was director Denis Villeneuve’s intentions. Villeneuve certainly doesn’t reinvent the genre of war thriller or anything here, but he certainly approaches it with a nuance which feels fresh, and a twist which sticks around with you almost with as much vehemence as something like Oldboy (2003).
Incendies opens with a masterfully shot opening scene, reminiscent of other war films like Apocalypse Now (1979), where nature is impeded by the violence of war to the sound of The End by The Doors. Here we see a beautiful landscape and a smooth movement of the camera as Thom Yorke’s voice fades in and we head into a disturbing house where child soldiers are being created by a mean looking militia. ‘Come on if you think you can take us on. You and whose army?’ plays out as children are stripped of their individuality with the cutting off of their hair. The camera stops and one child (who we later find out to be Nihad of May) looks fiercely and piercingly into the camera and into the soul of every viewer watching. It is spine chilling and a magnificent set up for what is a story about the horrors of war and the loss of identity that ensues because of it, perfectly encapsulated in Incendies main characters Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) and her twins Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin).
In modern day Quebec Nawal’s death greets her twins with a will reading. Her wishes? To be buried face down away from the cruel world under an unmarked gravestone, and for her daughter and son to find their father and brother. Jeanne is a mathematician, a very apt profession for the films story as is executed in the foreboding lecture where we hear in one of the following scenes talks of ‘solitary insoluble problems’ of ‘mind boggling complexity’. The equation of the past is indeed a solitary journey for Jeanne as she heads to the place of her mother’s birth and begins to uncover the troubling nature of her mothers formative years amidst a civil war.
Villenueve makes it fairly easy for the viewer to become entrenched in the story by utilising red titles to indicate exactly where we are. Using flashbacks we see the conflict in religion through Nawal’s unapproved partner, who is shot instantly upon arriving to her grandmother’s village. The violence is so nonchalant that it becomes truly surprising, and it is only the matriarchy in the form of Nawal’s grandmother that saves her life and the life of her unborn child. From here the birth of Nawal’s child follows in a washed-of-colour room, and Villenueve stirs emotion in you through the cutting of the umbilical chord, the sharp and clinical sound effectively the emotional separating of a mother and her child.
Nawal’s story goes from bad to worse and through Azabal’s acting and Villenueve’s direction there’s a sharp sense of sympathy for her character that is inescapable. As Nawal returns to her home looking for her lost son, Villenueve builds tension by placing us in insulation with her as she crosses borders and we hear but don’t see the chaos ensuing around her. The camera sleeps with her on the bus and we wake up as she does to a brutal mass shooting of everyone on it. It’s a real violent centrepiece of the story for Nawal, as she sees a child she tries to save who is clinically shot much like her partner was, and inspires her to assassinate a leader of the christians right-wing ranks.
In the transition back to Jeanne’s search, Thom Yorke’s voice returns with the intro song and Jeanne sits on a bus much like her mother did, rendering all the passengers with a sense of melancholy, as if they all are carrying the memories and horrors of war still now. The theme of matriarchy is also built upon as Jeanne visits the village where Nawal’s name is still dirt for her betrayal to their religion through her unapproved partner. It’s a beautiful use of dramatic irony, and creates a tighter bond of sympathy between us and Nawal.
As Nawal’s story continues and she faces imprisonment, torture and rape in Kfar Ryat for the assassination, Villenueve utilises tight shots that show the cramped space of her cell and frantically follows her back and forth as she paces it. We see restricted shots of her bloody and bandaged feet, that work as well as the various close ups of her in communicating her despair.
From this point we are introduced to Simon, and just as matriarchy and strong effected females are represented, male denial is also constructed. From the start of the film, Simon unconvincingly stresses that he is not interested in discovering his past, but his desire for answers is clear in his conflicted face. His place in Canada is a gloomy high rise flat that overlooks a busy highway, and the transitionary, unenlightened and anonymous nature of his surroundings are a reflection of himself. Upon his sisters call for help in the realisation that their mother was imprisoned and raped, he heads out and together they find out what we already have been shown: that both are the children of the rapist. An excellent sequence follows this revelation, as both plunge in the pool which sounds literally like a bombshell, and frantic splashing mirrors their pain and suffering. The fetal position in which they dive in the water is thus also signifying their rebirth in the knowledge gained of their identity.
But this is far from over. Much like how Jeanne surrounded herself in her mothers village with its stubborn matriarchy, Simon must now surround himself with a patriarchy dominated by memories of male violence in the form of a boys orphanage where his brother was registered after separation from Nawal and then subsequently by the warlord Chamseddine. He reveals the final and shocking twist that the rapist and their father is indeed their older brother, further entrenched in a gut wrenching flashback where Nawal realises the same.
It is a truly emotive climax, and you almost switch off as Nawal’s wishes are granted and her letters containing closure for her children are finally granted them by the notary. Nawal can finally be buried in the sun with her name carved on her gravestone, but what are we to make of this? Is this oedipal theme simply one of the horrors of war? Is it emblematic of the crisis of identity for war torn refugees? Or is it something more? I think the incest and violent nature of the twins birth is a direct metaphor for the violence of a civil war, where brothers and mothers and sisters will kill another brutally and in the most gruesome ways all in the name of a god perpetuated by unseeable people for their own desire of power. But in Nawal’s letters she still stands in defiance and with love, and in doing so she inspires her children to rise above and take their fractured and horrific identity to unify with each other finally.
I’ve decided I’m now going to post my five favourite shots from every film I do now, so here they are…
Incendies opens with a masterfully shot opening scene, reminiscent of other war films like Apocalypse Now (1979), where nature is impeded by the violence of war to the sound of The End by The Doors. Here we see a beautiful landscape and a smooth movement of the camera as Thom Yorke’s voice fades in and we head into a disturbing house where child soldiers are being created by a mean looking militia. ‘Come on if you think you can take us on. You and whose army?’ plays out as children are stripped of their individuality with the cutting off of their hair. The camera stops and one child (who we later find out to be Nihad of May) looks fiercely and piercingly into the camera and into the soul of every viewer watching. It is spine chilling and a magnificent set up for what is a story about the horrors of war and the loss of identity that ensues because of it, perfectly encapsulated in Incendies main characters Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) and her twins Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin).
In modern day Quebec Nawal’s death greets her twins with a will reading. Her wishes? To be buried face down away from the cruel world under an unmarked gravestone, and for her daughter and son to find their father and brother. Jeanne is a mathematician, a very apt profession for the films story as is executed in the foreboding lecture where we hear in one of the following scenes talks of ‘solitary insoluble problems’ of ‘mind boggling complexity’. The equation of the past is indeed a solitary journey for Jeanne as she heads to the place of her mother’s birth and begins to uncover the troubling nature of her mothers formative years amidst a civil war.
Villenueve makes it fairly easy for the viewer to become entrenched in the story by utilising red titles to indicate exactly where we are. Using flashbacks we see the conflict in religion through Nawal’s unapproved partner, who is shot instantly upon arriving to her grandmother’s village. The violence is so nonchalant that it becomes truly surprising, and it is only the matriarchy in the form of Nawal’s grandmother that saves her life and the life of her unborn child. From here the birth of Nawal’s child follows in a washed-of-colour room, and Villenueve stirs emotion in you through the cutting of the umbilical chord, the sharp and clinical sound effectively the emotional separating of a mother and her child.
Nawal’s story goes from bad to worse and through Azabal’s acting and Villenueve’s direction there’s a sharp sense of sympathy for her character that is inescapable. As Nawal returns to her home looking for her lost son, Villenueve builds tension by placing us in insulation with her as she crosses borders and we hear but don’t see the chaos ensuing around her. The camera sleeps with her on the bus and we wake up as she does to a brutal mass shooting of everyone on it. It’s a real violent centrepiece of the story for Nawal, as she sees a child she tries to save who is clinically shot much like her partner was, and inspires her to assassinate a leader of the christians right-wing ranks.
In the transition back to Jeanne’s search, Thom Yorke’s voice returns with the intro song and Jeanne sits on a bus much like her mother did, rendering all the passengers with a sense of melancholy, as if they all are carrying the memories and horrors of war still now. The theme of matriarchy is also built upon as Jeanne visits the village where Nawal’s name is still dirt for her betrayal to their religion through her unapproved partner. It’s a beautiful use of dramatic irony, and creates a tighter bond of sympathy between us and Nawal.
As Nawal’s story continues and she faces imprisonment, torture and rape in Kfar Ryat for the assassination, Villenueve utilises tight shots that show the cramped space of her cell and frantically follows her back and forth as she paces it. We see restricted shots of her bloody and bandaged feet, that work as well as the various close ups of her in communicating her despair.
From this point we are introduced to Simon, and just as matriarchy and strong effected females are represented, male denial is also constructed. From the start of the film, Simon unconvincingly stresses that he is not interested in discovering his past, but his desire for answers is clear in his conflicted face. His place in Canada is a gloomy high rise flat that overlooks a busy highway, and the transitionary, unenlightened and anonymous nature of his surroundings are a reflection of himself. Upon his sisters call for help in the realisation that their mother was imprisoned and raped, he heads out and together they find out what we already have been shown: that both are the children of the rapist. An excellent sequence follows this revelation, as both plunge in the pool which sounds literally like a bombshell, and frantic splashing mirrors their pain and suffering. The fetal position in which they dive in the water is thus also signifying their rebirth in the knowledge gained of their identity.
But this is far from over. Much like how Jeanne surrounded herself in her mothers village with its stubborn matriarchy, Simon must now surround himself with a patriarchy dominated by memories of male violence in the form of a boys orphanage where his brother was registered after separation from Nawal and then subsequently by the warlord Chamseddine. He reveals the final and shocking twist that the rapist and their father is indeed their older brother, further entrenched in a gut wrenching flashback where Nawal realises the same.
It is a truly emotive climax, and you almost switch off as Nawal’s wishes are granted and her letters containing closure for her children are finally granted them by the notary. Nawal can finally be buried in the sun with her name carved on her gravestone, but what are we to make of this? Is this oedipal theme simply one of the horrors of war? Is it emblematic of the crisis of identity for war torn refugees? Or is it something more? I think the incest and violent nature of the twins birth is a direct metaphor for the violence of a civil war, where brothers and mothers and sisters will kill another brutally and in the most gruesome ways all in the name of a god perpetuated by unseeable people for their own desire of power. But in Nawal’s letters she still stands in defiance and with love, and in doing so she inspires her children to rise above and take their fractured and horrific identity to unify with each other finally.
I’ve decided I’m now going to post my five favourite shots from every film I do now, so here they are…
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