Incendies (2011)
Incendies belongs to that rare breed of films that induce a tumultuous surge of emotions in its spectators while engaging them through the narrative. Jerry Seinfeld once said in his show Seinfeld, to add to the humor of that show undoubtedly, that Leo Tolstoy wanted to name his novel ‘War: What Is It Good For’ instead of “War and Peace”. Maybe that rhetorical question of a book title would have been an apt tagline for what was portrayed in this film. What sets Dennis Villeneuve’s ‘Incendies’ apart from other films with post-war trauma as their underlying theme, is the spectrum of human relationship he constructed on the screen. The film starts with twin brother and sister, Jeanne and Simon, receiving their recently deceased mother, Nawal’s funeral wishes; wishes that need to be fulfilled, before the children can proceed with the burial. In two different letters, the twins were asked to locate their father and half-brother, who we would later find was called N