INCENDIES
Canada, 2010, 131 minutes, Colour.
Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux- Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Remy Girard.
Directed by Denis de Villeneuve.
An important film. Incendies (Scorched) takes us into the upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and some of the human and inhuman consequences that can baffle, even frighten, those of us who live comfortable lives. While the country is not named in the film, it is based on events in Lebanon, civil wars, religious wars.
Incendies was the Canadian entry for the 2010 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (which was won by the moving Danish film, In a Better World).
Incendies is based on a play and there are many powerful dialogue sequences. However, the play is opened up cinematically, with a great deal of location photography (Jordan standing in for Lebanon) and local cultural atmosphere.
Initially, audiences have to keep their wits about them as the drama moves between two different time zones. A mother’s will is being read to her twin children by the lawyer for whom she has been secretary for eighteen years since she arrived with her children in Montreal. She has letters for them asking them to deliver them to their father and to their brother whom they do not know.
In the present, the film shows the search, first of all by Jeanne, and then by Simon, helped by the lawyer. Modern Canadians unused to the Middle East, go on a journey of discovery and new cultural awareness.
In the meantime, we see the past, from the 1960s to the 1990s, the life of the mother which turns out to be surprising to the children as they piece together what happened to her – and to us, because it is a frightening story. It is a story of family shame and denunciation and killing in the mountains of Lebanon. It is a story of adoption and the hard and unexpected life of an orphan at the time of civil war and atrocities. It is a story of a woman who receives and education but who takes a stand in the civil unrest and acts on it leading to an atrocious prison experience.
We follow the past story step by step as the younger generation pursue it, Jeanne with intensity, Simon unwillingly. Where it leads we did not anticipate at all though as it unfolds, we might suspect what happened – and hope that it didn’t. But it did.
The performances are persuasive. The writing of the play (the author collaborating with the film) has great intensity. The issues are important and raise our consciousness of events still being played out in the Middle East in a harrowing way.
1. Critical acclaim? Awards? A significant film?
2. The title? English translation: Scorched?
3. Lebanon, Jordan standing in for location photography? The 1960s to the 1990s? Audience information about war, civil war, clashes of religion? The transition to the 21st century?
4. The Lebanon on settings, the villages, the city, homes, prisons, orphanages, the devastation of war, universities? The 21st century, return and change? The musical score?
5. Use of chapter headings, the focus, people, places, situations?
6. The prologue with the boy, the tattoo on his foot, being shaved, prepared for military action? At such a young age?
7. The prologue, the twins, their lawyer? Memories of their mother, her being a secretary to the lawyer, her will, the conditions, the letters? Jeanne and her response favourably to the project? Simon against?
8. Their love for their mother, her work, the esteem people had for her, her hard life, keeping it secret?
9. The prologue in the 1970s, life in the village, in the hut, the rendezvous with her lover, the meeting, the family and their response, the brothers, the honour killing, the violence? Upset? Condemnation by her grandmother? Her pregnancy? Themes of honour, religious and cultural clash?
10. The birth of the son, the tattoo on his foot, his being taken to the orphanage?
11. Nawal at the University, activist, the range of students, their courses, Christians and Muslims, the warlords, exercises of power? The war and the consequences for the students?
12. Nawal’s work in publications, the war, the closing of the University, her work as a tutor, the child, her mission, the dramatic sequence of the meeting and the weapon, the sudden assassination, the surprise, the guests, the death?
13. The twins and the task of search for their mother, Jeanne and her going to Lebanon on, her inquiries, the visit to the village, the women against her and her mother’s memory? Her being puzzled?
14. Simon, unwilling, disbelieving? The discussions with the lawyer, his decision to go to search for his sister, the lawyer accompanying him, arriving in Lebanon, the variety of contacts? The character of Simon?
15. The discovery of the prison, the flashbacks, Nawal’s arrest, the small cell, her guilt and the assassination? The years passing? Being known as the woman who sings? The years of torture, rape, the torturer? Her pregnancy, the birth of the twins, the nurse and Jeanne finding her, and the other leads courtesy of the hospital? The saving of the twins? The audience knowing who was responsible?
16. Jeanne, the information about the past and the appointment with the warlord, Simon and his contacts, travelling, the revelation by the warlord? Sharing with Jeanne?
17. The letters, the task to find their brother and their father? The shock discovery?
18. The flashback, Nawal at the pool, seeing her torturer, recognising him, seeing the tattoo on his foot? His not recognising her? Her reaction, collapse, hospital, her death?
19. The delivery of the letters, the man reading each letter, the tone of each letter, blame yet love, the hope for peace? Niwal and the writing on the headstone for her grave?
20. The twins, the realisation about their heritage?
21. A worst possible solution for their search, having to live with it, the consequences?
