A grim, baffling tale

Rating: 4/10 (16 February 2012)

INCENDIES-- If you can watch the film right through, you will be properly horrified by the inhumanity of man to man, and the fierce grimness of life, for simple people in a barbarous middle-eastern wasteland of destruction. But first you will be baffled and frustrated by the breaks in continuity, in location, and in action... A swimming pool,empty--then suddenly with one glamorous female swimming under water, (used no doubt for "artistic symbolism"); then oddly populous; then a hospital scene. Incoherence, and grimness, are the keynotes.
The "twins" introduced near the outset, are given a heart-rending puzzle to solve when their mother's strange will is read out. Jump cuts offer no help to the viewer trying to follow this trail. But the prevailing mood of tragedy, danger, hostility pervades.
Against the film-world hype and "glamour" of the award (director's interview among the Extras), I find it to be artistically self-indulgent, the director drawing on the pathos of tragedy in order to display his originality and talent.