Ryan McNeil
How can you know where you’re going, if you don’t know where you’ve been?
At the outset of INCENDIES, we meet the Marwan twins: Jeanne and Simon. Their mother Nawal has died quite unexpectedly, spending her final weeks in an unexplainable state of silence. Now that she has passed, the twins are meeting with the notary (who was also Nawal’s employer) to go over the details of her will. It’s then that we learn that her sudden death was only the beginning.
Within the will are instructions for the twins, with a caveat that until the instructions are carried out, they will have no closure, and not be able to properly mourn their mother. The will includes two envelopes – one for the twins’ father, and one for their brother. The hitch is that for all the twins knew, their father was dead…and this is the first they are hearing of a brother.
Simon is reluctant to follow the path that has been set out for him, but Jeanne takes up the sword immediately. In doing this, she will learn just how little she knows about who her mother is, and where her family comes from.
What I’ve told you of the plot is detailed within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, the rest will remain a mystery. I could go on to tell you where Jeanne goes to piece the puzzle together, or what glimmers of Nawal’s life we see as her own story plays out…but that would be a great disservice to this intricately crafted story by Denis Villeneuve based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad.
What I will do is echo something the notary says to Simon –death is never the ending, it leaves tracks. People we love will leave this existence (sometimes quite suddenly), leaving us to try to carry on without them. Unfortunately, more often than not, people die without doing all they need to do, or saying all they have to say. In trying to close the book on their lives, we find ourselves reading entire volumes we didn’t know existed. We become filled with emotion wondering why they never told us…but a closer look can show us that perhaps they just didn’t know where to begin.
In such instances, is it just better not to know? Wouldn’t it be easier to spare our soul the burden? One could go on living their life, secure in what they believe to be true. Perhaps Don Draper is right, and over time it would shock a person just how much something “didn’t happen”. But for some, like Jeanne, such denial just isn’t possible. It’s like seeing a flaw in a masterpiece. Once you see it, you can never not see it.
What this leads to for INCENDIES, is where it can often lead to when it comes time to let the truth come to light. With her dying wishes, Nawal has decreed to her children “I don’t know how to tell you this – let me show you”. It’s not enough to unbutton your shirt and unveil a scar…sometimes to give someone the full effect, you need to pull a knife and reopen the wound.
Only then, as the truth pours out in indelible deep red drops can they fully understand. In coercing her children to seek out her footprints and follow where they lead, Nawal is giving them the greatest possible method to understand what this family is all about…and how they can be better people going forward.
If all of this sounds like I’m being intentionally vague…well…I am. I vaguely knew of this film last fall when it was a TIFF selection, which is to say that I knew its name. My awareness was raised of course when it became an Oscar finalist for the Best Foreign Film, representing my home country for the first time in seven years. I went into it knowing precious little, and was deeply moved and shocked in large thanks to the lack of details.
It’s an unforgettable story, and one of painful yet precise execution. Don’t go looking for a trailer on the film…just see it the first chance you get.