Thursday 15 June 2017

Incendies and Second-Guesses

Thought I would check out Incendies today, its been on my list for a long time and it was amazingly cathartic to finally tick it off. In many ways, this film really makes a name for itself, it has a strong and convincing cast, beautiful camera work and locations and a very worthy story to boot. My only gripe with it is that I was able to figure out what the big reveal was only halfway through the film - and this is coming from someone who is rubbish at spotting twists in films. This actually doesn't bother me very much in other films with twists, if I can for whatever reason, second-guess a bit of the plot in any film, I get excited for two reasons:

1. I want to find out if I'm right about my hunch. (Petty I know, but who doesn't love getting their guess right?)

2. I am eager to see how the characters will react to the twist

The problem with Incendies is that it doesn't really dedicate enough time to showing how the characters deal with some pretty eye opening things about their family. We are just rushed along to the next scene so we can get the next piece of the puzzle. It's irritating, because our two protagonists just become an excuse to tell this story; they are vessels instead of fleshed out characters. So when the film does come out with a big reveal, there's no real pay-off to that moment, the characters look mopey but that's about it.


It's a shame, because a story of this calibre deserves to be done a little more justice. Instead I'll remember Incendies as having a great story instead of being a great film.

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