Five Reasons To Go See Incendies

Denis Villeneuve‘s Oscar nominated thriller Incendies is finally released across the UK today.

I spoke to its star, Lubna Azabal, last week and, below, she’ll help me give you five good reasons to see the film. First, though, a little set-up.

Incendies‘ story starts quietly. A pair of twins at the reading of their mother’s will are each given an envelope and told to track down and deliver them, one to their father, and one to their brother. In their resulting investigations, they start to uncover the secret life of their mother, and it changes everything the thought they knew about her.

This could have been the premise for a 1930s film noir, and in places, Incendies has that same doomy, shadowy mystery about it. At other times, it’s a hard thriller set against the backdrop of war in the middle east. Other times, a deep family tragedy.

The film’s plot information is released in a very calculated, often clever way, and there’s a steady build in understanding until the film ends on a real hum dinger of a twist. Critics are in disagreement about the big surprise though I have to say, when the rug went woosh and I came crashing to my knees, I fell on the twist  hard and it took a moment or two to really grasp what it really meant.

But I got it quickly, and I think, actually, the plot contrivance that the film might be accused of is not so heinous, and definitely a worthwhile price to pay for what the twist unlocks in ideas and meaning.

Here are five things I discussed with Lubna Azabal, the actress who plays Nawal, the mysterious mother. Each of them underlines, in a different way, why I’m recommending the film.

1. The Mysterious Nawal

I decided to work on Nawal with very concrete things, you know? In the beginning, she’s just a young woman in love who’s accused. Then, she’s also a movie, and it’s the journey of this movie looking for this child inside a complex world. Those kinds of things were very real and concrete for me, she could be like any mother in the world but she has this tragic destiny that she never expected. My other references are everything I can see around me, on the TV news and in the world around me as I travel. I looked wide.

2. Love and Hate, Vengeance and Forgiveness Can Co-exist

Denis Villeneuve and Wajdi Mouawad, the author of the original play, put the political things on the side on purpose. They didn’t want that the movie became a political movie because the war is something universal and this could be happening, for example, in Serbia. The play is set in an Arab country because the author, Wajdi, is from Lebanon but he didn’t want to put the names of the countries, of each village, because they are all fake, because he didn’t want to make political things the main subject.

For me it’s more a big family portrait. We talk about family honour and about family secrets and we also deal with the notion that love and hate, vengeance and forgiveness can co-exist sometimes. During this journey in a complex world, this woman is a witness to all of the horror of the war and at a certain point she decided to become a kind of outsider and revenge what she saw.

3. A Woman At War

The way Denis decided to work, when he decided to adapt the play, he did something that I think is very, very smart. The play is a masterpiece, when you see it on stage it’s 3 hours, there’s a lot of monologues, a lot of characters, and men get a lot of time in the play. But Denis chose the destroy the play and to rebuild it around one angle. You could make ten different movies around that play. In this Denis Villeneuve movie, yes, it’s all around women. He’s questioning rape as a weapon of war, and that without women there is no humanity, there is no world. They bring life, the continuity of life. It’s a story of how to find piece, how to cut the transmission of anger, and how this question can be resolved by women.

4. The Surprise Attack

Somewhere in the body of the film there’s a sudden, shocking attack, an act of war. I don’t want to reveal too much about it, so I have removed some of Ms. Azabal’s comments. What remains, however, is her perspective on why the scene is so crucial.

It’s a turning point for Nawal. She decides on revenge. It’s as much a shock for her as the viewer. This is the violence of the war. For her, it’s the edge of the violence – she can’t handle anything any more. Her destiny starts to form in a tragic way.

5. Shocked Audiences

In the beginning I was very surprised. I didn’t expect that the audience would respond so much after seeing the movie. It’s not an easy movie, talking about tough, very tense and powerful things. There are so many things in the movie that the audience can understand because it’s maybe a mirror on their own life. You can question yourself about “From where do I come? Who are my parents? What is my past?” This is a question that you maybe never tired to answer, but in each family there will be this kind of black zone, of things you do not know. It will not benefit you every time to know these things.

Incendies is in UK cinemas now.