I was aware of this film after looking through Denis Villeneuve's works in the past. I an a fan of the director, so was glad to finally find this one after more than a year. It wasn't quite what I expected. Villeneuve's later works have a very highly visual style, so I was expecting this to be heavy on the beautiful framing and cinematography, but it didn't have the same feel. That's not to say it was lacking because of it, of the seven of his films I have seen, I think I would put only Prisoners above this.
Incendies follows a brother and sister's journeys to find the long hidden truth about thier family, including their mother, whose reading of her will opens the film. They are French Canadians who must travel to the middle East to follow the instructions their mother left them. They will uncover startling truths about their history and experience hardships and cruelty, although it doesn't compare with the journey their mother had been through, some of which is truly harrowing. Alot of the violence is made even more disturbing through the unflashy, matter of fact direction, which simply shows it, with no warning. Lesser filmmakers would have made efforts to highlight the events to cheaply increase their impact.
The audience experience is ultra hard hitting with explosive moments. The film examines religious hatred and whilst there is no doubt that most, if not all of the morally abhorrent things we see are politically/ratially motivated, the great thing is that the film never comes across preachy or even overbearing, it is simply a human story. One which is shared between the brother, sister and mum (through flashbacks) The different time lines are built as things go on, which gave me vibes of things like Amores Perros, Traffic and Babel. This is a real triumph, and deserves to be much more revered.
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