Incendies begins with little boys getting their heads shaved while “You and Whose Army” inexplicably plays. Then we are in Canada while two adult fraternal children of a deceased woman listen to their mother’s former employer read her will to go on a devastating scavenger hunt: for Jeanne to find her father and Simon to find her brother. Simon is sick of his mother’s ways, but Jeanne is a mathematician and is eager to solve a problem with possibly no answers. She remembers the day that her mother, Nawal, became ill so with the help of her mentor, she begins her quest at a university in the Middle East. It is only after death that the mother can finally reveal her story, and she does it by giving few clues. Incendies then tells two parallel stories: Jeanne and Marwan’s search for their family in an unnamed, unfamiliar country in the Middle East, and Nawal’s story from the day that their brother came into existence until she decided to leave her homeland.
If Denis Villeneuve directs a film, see it so I watched Incendies, which is his best film to date. Incendies elevates Villeneuve to Krzysztof Kieslowski legendary levels of excellence. Incendies retroactively makes Maelstrom a better movie because without his missteps in that film, Incendies would not exist. Incendies means conflagrations or fires, and I secretly wonder if he had plans to do a thematic film series about other elements, earth and air—water was Maelstrom. Incendies is an adaptation of a play, and I knew nothing about it so the whole experience was a complete shock. You should see Incendies even if you hate subtitles because the story is that devastatingly perfect.
Nawal’s story is also the microcosm of a story about a country during a religious civil war where hospitality to neighbors in need transformed into needless cruelty and violence. Water in the river or a pool become symbols of a mother’s womb, danger and the immigration across the ocean, which is like a rebirth or baptism to cleanse the immigrants and their descendants of the sins of war. Incendies suggests that Nawal’s children, the one that she is forced to separate from and the ones that she never planned to have, mirrors the history of this country-the forced rejection by a Christian mother of a Muslim son of a refugee and a daily reminder of surviving pain. Incendies knows that telling the story of one woman is emblematic of the story of a country, which may be Lebanon.
Incendies is also the story of how and why we tell stories, how and why some people try to erase those stories and how and why we are desperate to hear stories, especially to fully understand our lives. No one can fully know someone, and after death, that inadequate knowledge can feel like you failed that person, but Incendies suggests that it is impossible to truly listen to a story if someone who is close to you tells the story, and it is impossible to truly tell the story to someone who is close to you. There is too much that cannot be conveyed and that may incidentally be conveyed that is not relevant. Incendies highlights the roles of notaries, nurses, guards, professors and even warlords as custodians of memory and ultimately history. Every story matters even a random, eccentric woman from an unnamed country. Families and countries try to erase stories thus eliminate branches from the family tree, but professionals are custodians of the truth and are like priests, confessors at death that bring the truth to life.
If I was required to choose one scene in Incendies that blew me away, it is the bus scene then shifting to Jeanne listening to her iPod. At that point, I knew that I was not prepared for what Incendies had in store for its audience even if I could guess. I will definitely revisit Incendies, which probably gets better at each subsequent viewing. Villeneuve could have stopped making films after Incendies and still be better than most filmmakers living or dead. Incendies is a must see masterpiece.