|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product Details
|
Product Description
Amazon.ca
This hauntingly enigmatic Canadian film and 2010 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee unfolds backward and forward in time as a riveting, intricate mystery story. Clues are doled out gradually and often without the benefit of reason until shocking answers are unearthed in the final minutes. Set primarily in an unnamed Middle East country that is probably Lebanon, events are told in flashbacks and present-day scenes that run together without comment or overt transitions, employing a formal structure that requires us to pay constant attention to the shifts in perspective. It's a challenging task, but one that becomes enormously engrossing as the narrative weaves around itself against the backdrop of a bloody civil war and the equally damaging emotional battle of a family that is bound to a past ruled by equal parts devotion and horror. The primary characters are Nawal Marwan and her twin children Jeanne and Simon. A framing device set in Montreal where the grown twins hear a reading of their recently deceased mother's will sets up a quest that must be resolved before her body can be put to rest. They are each given sealed letters by the avuncular notary who was both their mother's employer and family friend (he also becomes pretty important to the extended plot, as do a number of other seemingly minor characters). As her last request, the mother has instructed Jeanne to deliver one letter to their father and Simon to deliver the other to their brother. Even though the twins believed their unknown father to be long dead and were unaware of the existence of a brother, Nawal's will assures them that both men are very much alive. With nothing more than the family name and a vague history of Nawal's early life in the strife-torn country where fighting between Christians and Muslims wrought a years-long bloodbath, both children get a crack at solving the mystery. The trails they follow each in their own turn are intercut with episodes from the young Nawal's journey of heartbreak, tension, and terror decades earlier. The children uncover incremental details in the same resolutely objective fashion that director Denis Villeneuve reels out others through the experiences of Nawal as she lived through her own ordeal. The script by Villeneuve was based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, and there is a deeply resonant literary quality to the narrative that gives what might have otherwise seemed like an unlikely series of coincidences a profound sense of plausibility. An ultimate and entirely legitimate sense of destiny is revealed to all the characters that pass through the story, even in the most tangential way. The truths revealed by the surprise ending are truly devastating and completely unexpected, especially to those for whom the reality they thought they knew has been upended in ways that are unimaginable. --Ted Fry
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Family mysteries, buried violence,
By
This review is from: Incendies (DVD)
Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies is a mystery and family history exposing the uncomfortable reality that our parents had a life before we were born, that we, as their children, can never truly know that life, and, as such, can never truly know our parents.Nawal Marwan has died and she has left instructions for her twin children, Jeanne and Simon. Jeanne is to find their father; Simon is to find their brother. Their father, they thought, was already dead, and the existence of a brother was heretofore unknown to them. Simon, angry and resentful, dismisses his mother's dying but confounding wishes. Jeanne, for her part, embarks on a quest to find these mysterious relatives of which she had no knowledge, headed for the country of her mother's birth, the fictional Fouad. Here, the narrative alternates between Jeanne's present-day investigation and Nawal's own harrowing story. It is this story upon which Incendies is built and it is this story that draws us, the audience, in--just as it will forever remain indistinct to Nawal's children. Having narrowly escaped an honour killing for having become pregnant out of wedlock, Nawal alternates between the two sides of a civil war, eventually ending up in prison where she is raped and tortured but gains an almost legendary status as The Woman Who Sings. The film's pace is slow, methodical, with sudden bursts of gut-wrenching action. The violence, however, is there only because the story demands it, not to shock or cause undue and unnecessary discomfort (discomfort that is too often justified by the makers of art-house films with claims of "telling the truth"). The violence is brutal, but the victims are treated with dignity. For the most part, the brutality is allowed to exist in the viewer's imagination. Tension is created through admirable restraint: A man stands, a small smile upon his lips, examining a frightened woman bound to a chair. She is aware of his intensions. We are aware of his intensions. There are also moments of levity; a metal detector getting the biggest laughs. The story does, at times, veer into the realm of the improbable, but this, like the violence, is not to shock or fit a pre-constructed narrative, but to make a point. Beyond the ever-presence of familial mysteries, Incendies deals with violence, not simply as a cycle, but as a web, spreading in often blind directions, sometimes turning upon itself, even as it continues to grow. To make this point, the filmmaker must take some liberties with credibility, but always operating truthfully within the fictional world he has created. Incendies, written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, a man whose work will be familiar to most followers of Québec cinema, is an intense, stark film, well acted and beautifully photographed. Fouad, here, stands in for a civil war-era Lebanon and, in turn, Jordan is used to depict Villeneuve's imaginary land. The cinematographer, André Turpin, depicts Fouad as a land victimized by its own history, arid and nearly devoid of colour, even as it is rendered beautiful by its scars. Incendies was nominated for the foreign-language Oscar. Though it will find more favour within the art-house community than it will at the box office, it should allow Villeneuve entry into a greater, more diverse international market.
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Great Québec Films, Despite Its Crippling Lack of Subtitles, e.g. in English!,
By C-P Parker "Jerry Parker" (région de l'Abitibi, QC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Incendies (DVD)
Perhaps the lack of subtitles, as for the English language, is a "statement" on the part of those who have prepared it for DVD release, but I would like to remind such zealots that subtitles serve other needs than to placate Anglophones. As I am ageing, I need subtitles more and more as my hearing becomes less acute than it was, to remarkable degree, earlier in life. Whether they are in French or in English, either way, I need subtitles when watching films spoken in either of these languages! I simply shall not buy this film, though I wish very much to have it, until subtitles are there, and hopefully in English and French (and in any other languages included as options). This fault does not help Wajdi Mouawad, among others, whose career should be one of international scope (including people of all degrees of auditory capability), not just for (sharp-eared) French-Canadians!Even without the subtitles, though, one has to give this amazing film at least four stars to do it justice; the missing fifth star from a total five only is due to the linguistic shortcoming of the DVD product, not the film and the play upon which it is based!
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Complexities of Peace,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Incendies (DVD)
This recent film directed by the Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve deals with the impact that modern warfare has on a particular family as seen through the eyes of the mother. As a human dramatization of some very real events, this movie spoke to me on a couple of planes. One, war has a very destructive ability to immediately tear people's lives apart. Though the film doesn't actually say so, there are strong hints that the war zone in the movie is Lebanon of the eighties when Israel occupied it in its campaign to defeat Hezbollah and solidify its northern borders. The main part of this harrowing tale consists of a mother's life as an unattached terrorist who is caught and brutally treated by the occupying forces. We are led to believe that this woman's murderous actions are in direct retaliation for what war has done to destroy her family. Her cause is personal and not political. During her time in gaol, she bears a child from being gang-raped by her gaolers. Two, the film really takes on special meaning when she eventually is released and allowed to immigrate to Montreal, Canada, to start a new life and raise her family. In her heart there is always that longing desire to be re-united with her child left behind in her homeland. It is her dying wish for her two Canadian children to go back and find that lost child that reflects both the anguish and love of her soul at it lowest point. Our attention is now turned to the consuming efforts of Janine and Simon as they search for their half-brother and father. Their journey is one that meets with all kinds of emotional and physical challenges as they move through a Lebanese society still scarred by memories of war and bound by male dominance. The end to their long and frustrating hunt for the truth comes when hope suddenly gives way to joy with a very interesting discovery in the most unlikely of places. The collateral damage of war suddenly is transformed into the embodiment of love, which proves that peace can outlive strife.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
