Incendies

Incendies is no one’s idea of a joyful ride, but it’s a remarkable work, and its complex story etches itself on the memory.

The movie is a bumpy road of twists that leads to a revelation that has the shock and force of Greek tragedy.

A mystery, a melodrama, a prison film, and a love story, Incendies is foremost a scream of rage at a society destroyed by religion and by men.

Filled with striking images and the ghosts of lives lived in hardship and war, Incendies is tough but impactful.

A deeply resonant literary quality gives what might otherwise seem like a dubious series of coincidences a profound sense of plausibility.

An enormously effective piece of filmmaking, Incdendies unfolds as a series of eye-opening disclosures which Villeneuve plays as much for (admittedly enthralling) sensation as for any kind of wider-ranging inquiry, a questionable approach given the thorny nature of the material.

Nawal's travails are more in the vein of a Latin American soap opera than Greek tragedy, and Jeanne and Simon's climactic, genuinely god-awful discovery plays like artistic sleight-of-hand rather than the profoundly tautological revelation it aspires to be.

Incendies is the most foreign language war drama film ever made by Denis Villeneuve. This film yet talks about families being separated in parts of tragedies long lost in time for how mothers can be able to see their children again for another time when they are long gone, imprisoned, or dead but there's more to this film I wanted to see in the end. To be real Denis Villeneuve's screen adaptation of a play by the Lebanese Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad tells a story-masterfully-of courage, cruelty, family mysteries and a chain of anger that can only be broken by love. To me I say this film was far too amazing.

At times, the movie is so good that it could have been a masterpiece (no wonder it was nominated for Oscar in International movies category). But it is not. The final twist of the story (which is tightly connected to the beginning) makes the whole of it somewhat of a farce. In my opinion, the topic of great magnitude, such as civilian population suffering in a war, should not be confined into an obscure and improbable case. Still, I cannot overlook the number of impressive, magnificent scenes which make the movie definitely worth seeing.

An okay movie, but extremely overrated by critics. The story is basically a two-hour intellectual torture porn, piling tragedy upon tragedy so inflationarily that after one hour, I lost all emotional connection to the protagonist. Talking about protagonists, the three main characters lack depth and development and feel like they are just there to enable the (admittedly rather skillful) telling of the plot. As has been criticised by a lot of other reviewers, the plot twists become more and more contrived to the point of absurdity - which is not a big problem if you accept the movie as an illustration about the effect that war has on the fate of the individual. What's a lot more unfortunate is that exactly this illustration is ill-executed because we get so little insight into the world of the characters. The movie doesn't make a firm commitment to telling either the story of a society torn by war or that of individuals broken by war and, as a result, fails at convincingly telling either of the two. I guess the good reviews are a result of the many - and not very elaborate - references the story makes to topics which are usually well-received by critics, regardless of the quality in which they are presented: cultural oppression of women, sexual violence, child soldiers, perversion of religion for the purpose of war, etc. On a more positive note, it has some very well-crafted and intense scenes and well-picked scenery. In the end, neither Incendies' plot nor its message warrant sitting through two hours of headshots, bombs, ****, child murder, torture and screaming women, so I wouldn't recommend it.

A movie that almost kills from boredom and yawning I don't know why it was so long The graphic scenes are bad and very disturbing The scenes were slow, dull, and weak Acting is not that good

Un psychodrame à la mords-moi-le-noeud qui se déroule à la vitesse d'un escargot et dont les enjeux passent par dessus la tête : on n'en a rien mais vraiment rien à cirer de cette histoire socio-dramatique à la con qui ne réussit jamais à capter l'attention. Au contraire le film distille l'ennui à une cadence infernale, ce qui appelle des batteries de baillements irrépressibles... les comédiens sont à la ramasse et l'accent québécois est ici un obstacle non négligeable à la compréhension (où sont passés les sous-titres, christ de tabernak ?) Evidemment, la réalisation du gars Villeneuve qui a fait bien mieux à Hollywood par la suite (mais pas toujours, loin s'en faut...) reste bloquée à deux de tension, ce qui garantit au moins un sommeil de qualité. Même si on espérait un "vrai" film à la base...