Incendies [film review]

There are two stories running through Denis Villeneuve's award-winning French-Canadian film, Incendies. But, as is pointed out in a slightly strained mathematical analogy, one plus one sometimes equals one.

Based on a earlier play, Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies takes its central characters, twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormaeux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), from Canada to Lebanon, following a quest set by their mother's Will in 2009. She, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal - also seen in the BBC's Occupation) has insisted her grave remains unmarked until they find the father and brother whose existence they've only just discovered.

Meanwhile – as it were – the young Nawal, in 1970s Lebanon, is living through the upheaval and religious warfare rampant in the Middle East. Her brother kills her lover, before her newborn son is taken away for adoption. Azabal gives us a spirited heroine, contrasting with the shellshocked woman we've already seen her become in contemporary Canada at the shattering moment when those two stories collide. It's a powerful and moving story of ugly actions across a divided nation. Seriously, this is a period of history well worth reading up on in light of Incendies.

The twins uncover more and more of their mother's story, and inevitably discover more about their own origins than they're comfortable with. There's a human drive for knowledge, a curiosity in the face of a conundrum which keeps pushing the twins inexorably onwards. They don't know it, but it's a quest for self-knowledge as much as it is a quest for their father and brother. The tight plotting and human thirst for knowledge in Incendies wouldn't be out of place in a Greek tragedy, and here it lends Incendies a throbbing ache in its heart; humans can be so curious they'll find things they don't want to know.

In fact, there's definitely something Oedipal about that missing brother, taken as he is just after having his ankle tattooed. The tattoo is one marker allowing us to follow his life in snapshots through the same war that his mother survives. It's a war that hardens him, and Incendies doesn't shy away from the acts of brutality committed, though always leaving just enough unseen and unsaid for the blanks to be filled in. That said, the order of events is masterfully handled in a way to make Greek tragedians spin in their graves, but to deliver a full-on shock to the modern audience.

A film that starts as powerfully as Incendies could build to something angry, something bereft of hope. The first five minutes leave the viewer fixed firmly in the gaze of a young boy (with a tattooed ankle) whose hair is being shaved by soldiers conscripting an orphanage. His eyes appeal for outside help even while defiance shines from them – how like his mother, later imprisoned and raped by the militia.


But what finally comes out of Incendies is forgiveness and the unbreakable love of family. Incendies teaches us that humanity can somehow overcome the ugliness it creates. Or at least that a family may do so.

Occupation on BBC One

With the recent announcement of another inquiry into the build-up, waging, and fall-out of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the BBC's drama Occupation is very timely.

From the off, it shows a modern, highly-trained and professional army disastrously misused against a military force that looks civilian and co-exists alongside civilians. The potential for mishaps is huge, as a gang of British squaddies soon discovers. James Nesbitt's Sgt. Mike Swift is the one labelled a hero, dashing through the streets carrying a young, injured girl. But he's also the first to learn just how limited is the British capacity to help the local populace. He almost looks like he expects to be taking her to a modern, state-of-the-art British (private) hospital...his face falls as he learns the girl's operation will never happen, because Basra's hospital has neither the equipment nor the surgeons.

Luckily for him, he does get to meet pretty Dr. Aliyah (Lubna Azabal), who – somehow – manages to come over to Britain with the headline-grabbing girl and get her fixed up in a plush-looking hospital. She also gets a rather nice apartment, which is apparently not a permanent arrangement, but looks it. She is Swift's eye in the storm that is Iraq. In fact, she becomes rather more than that, briefly, and Mrs. Swift (Monica Dolan) is understandably not impressed (though how she finds out about the brief snog is anyone's guess). Clearly, like a sailor, Swift has a woman in both ports – a foreign lover and a domestic wife, different types of women for different settings.

That different setting is highlighted again and again in Occupation. Britain is cool, safe (even the London bombings feel remote), secure and exists in greys, blues and whites. Iraq is hot, rife with danger, almost lawless and exists in red, browns, beige and the black of the military contractors. Our squaddies (Nesbitt, among others) seem bored in their home lives, Stephen Graham's Danny being the most keen for more action. Seeing the way his dementia-afflicted mum mistakes a hulking black man for her short, stocky white son, it's hardly surprising. He's soon off with ex-Marine Lester (Nonso Anozie, a suave fridge-shaped bulk of towering Size – with the capital 'S') running a private security firm in Basra.

They've recruited fellow ex-squaddie Lee Hibbs, played brilliantly by Warren Brown. Personally, I've always been a fan of Nesbitt, but on this occasion, Brown may have pipped him to my Favourite Actor slot. Once his medical record sees him discharged from the Army, Hibbs tries a bit of Bouncing, before joining Danny and Lester in Basra, but flips when his local mate is – a bit predictably – killed by Shi'ia militiamen within the Iraqi police. Men Hibbs himself trained in his squaddie days. It's on his return to the country that Brown gets to run through the other half of human emotion he hasn't yet covered (having already shown euphoria, joy, anger, anguish and chirpy ladish cheerfullness back home) when he finds his mate's family and then gets kidnapped.

If you only know Warren Brown as the barman in Grownups, taking his top off at every (invented) opportunity, you have to watch Occupation. Brown deserves not to be underestimated as a first-class actor.