Incendies: Not just another "Brave Broads in Burkas" Movie

I know what you are thinking...you cannot abide another "Brave Broads in Burkahs" movie. But do not let the saturation of Mid-East Melodramas keep you away from Incindies, Denis Villenueve's well-crafted and delicate film based on Wadji Mouawad's play.

The story follows two Canadian siblings who follow their late mother's wishes as they go to Lebanon to find their father and lost brother. This is not just your usual "re-connect with my cultural roots" trip, but a complex, dangerous navigation through a historically treacherous landscape.

The film reminds me in many ways of Wolfgang Staudte's 1946 German film "The Murderers are Among Us," as a woman tries to delve into the past traumas that lead to the present neuroses in everyone she meets. Everyday people--janitors, bus cleaners, family members--turn out to have been torturers, snipers, assassins, collaborators, and warlords. This is not only in Lebanon--even a harmless trip to a swimming pool in Canada brings people into collision with their past.

The brilliant thing about this film is the exposition in the narrative. We flash back and forth between three stories, three lives and three points of view, gradually understanding the horrifying way that the three worlds connect. Yes, there are flashes of the horrors of war and terrorism, but this film is really a mystery when all is said and done. And, like the greatest mystery stories, the detective is viscerally, humanly obsessed and involved in the process of solution.

Kudos for the brilliant warmth that the main character brings to her character--not just a wide-eyed victim, but a woman so determined that she cannot bother to hide her self doubt. The nicest thing about the film, though, is that it does not fall into the role of political vindication. The whole thing is shot in Jordan, and the film places the particularities of the Lebanese political situation into the background. This makes the story intensely personal and universal--not just a story of a particular family in a particularly horrible conflict, but a picture of family in conflict.