IMDb #170 Review: Incendies (2010)

Source: Wikipedia

A twin brother and sister leave Quebec for their mother's nondescript Arab homeland, because her will stipulates they scour the war-torn desert for their half-brother and father.

Brutal realism ensues.

Following in their mother's footsteps, the daughter (and, eventually, the son) traces a meandering trail of influence across the tactfully unnamed nation, heretofore referred to as Nondescript.

In Nondescript, right-wing Arab Christian terrorists wreak havoc. They hold up, shoot up, and occasionally blow up buses.

In Nondescript, harsh old people cling to the harsh old laws. Illegitimate children are shipped off to orphanages, which revolutionaries pillage and loot for orphans to train as militia snipers.

In Nondescript, illegitimate mothers might have it the hardest. Villages shun them. Crones shrill at them for sullying the family name. The university kicks them out, shattering a successful career path, for completely unrelated circumstances. And, surprisingly, the corrupt regime tosses people into hellish prisons, even for assassinating just one Nationalist leader.

The storyline bounces between past mother and future children like narrative volleyball. Fat red sans-serif letters announce where we are at as chapters begin, not that knowing the location is as helpful as knowing who the hell are these people again. Watch anyway. The atmosphere of religious tradition, seething hatred, and pressurized violence feel painfully authentic.

But. (It's a BIG but.) The pressurized atmosphere explodes when the timelines converge. Because the SENSELESSLY TRAGIC CONCLUSION hinges on NOT ONE, but TWO UNFORGIVABLY CONTRIVED COINCIDENCES.

One happens in Nondescript, the other in Canada, years apart. ONE is forgivable; TWO is inexcusable. The shock, or perhaps sheer unfathomable stupidity, of this revelation literally kills the amazing lady whose last will and testament kicks off Plot B.

Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens, inveterate masters of passably deployed coincidence, are simultaneously beating their heads against the pearly gates, shrieking invectives against the village idiot of cheapjack copouts. "It was so good -- SO GOOD -- until THAT THING happened!" they'd rail, if they weren't so dead.

130 minutes.