Denis Villeneuve's mystery unfolds within the horror of civil war

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2016)

"Incendies" (meaning "Scorched" in English) is a Canadian mystery-drama and is as intense as any film I've seen. The story begins as brother and sister twins are read their mother's last will, a disjointed, delirious and despairing appeal that they travel to the Middle East to uncover the dark secret of their family history as a condition of fulfilling her last wishes.
We're never told exactly WHERE the mystery story which unravels as Nawal's life takes place; at least no specific countries are named: all military raiment, weapons and vehicles are either generic or anonymous (best as I remember, even the university is simply "The University"). On the other hand, the bus massacre is conducted by AK-47 wielding "Christian rightists" (the Phalange, if we assume a Lebanese parallel), the off-camera destruction of the orphanage at Kfar Khout was committed by "nationalists" (movie code for Lebanese Arab Nationalists) while Nawal's son was "mercifully rescued" by the Muslim warlord Chamseddine.
OK, we get it. Even without naming a specific country or political cause, there's little doubt who's the off-camera bad guy whose regional presence provokes the conflict that is the movie's backdrop. But this is a movie review, not an exegesis on geopolitical policy or regional prejudices. Just be aware that a socio-political narrative exists, and accept that the film assumes secondary evils emerge from a primary source ... without directly saying so.
The adult twins' quest quickly becomes a passionate and exhausting peregrination into the cycle of violence too often dismissed as endemic in the Middle East. Our persistence for staying with Incendies through to the climax is rewarded with the revelation that the incestuous consequence of personalizing anonymous violence to become internalized and incarnated into retributive action is the birth of an even greater and more loathsome lusus naturae: when we incubate malevolence and evil we risk becoming the wellspring of the evil confounding us.
Although described as a masterpiece by some critics I have no desire to see Incendies again nor can I think of a good reason to recommend Incendies to casual viewers ... not because of excessive gore, gratuitous violence or sensationalized sexual content (Incendies is probably modest in this regard, given the film's setting) or because Incendies is a bad film, but because Incendies so effectively immerses its audience into the emotional horror and wretchedness of despair without extending a commensurate glimpse of either redemption or restoration.