When I think of live theatre, my mind floats to some of the tropes that have come to dominate the medium – unrealism, cloyingly maudlin performances and heavy-handed attempts at audience affectation.

Such were my expectations going into Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Feature, Canada) film Incendies, based on a play written by fellow Quebecois (by way of Lebanon) Wajdi Mouawad.

While the film does have a touch of its theatrical roots, stylistically, it refuses to stay rooted in the limited scope of its origin.

Incendies is a grand film in every regard, but it’s never a grandiosity that is forced upon the viewer, but rather inherent to the beautiful and devastating story.

Set in Quebec, the story is about twins Jeanne and Simon, the children of Nawal, who has just passed away.

Nawal has left a bewildering will. She requests to be buried without a coffin, naked and face down. That is, unless Jeanne and Simon can deliver two sealed letters to their father and previously unknown brother.

Nawal was a native of a vague region of the Middle East, so Jeanne, determined to give her beloved mother a proper burial, sets off to deliver the letters to her father and brother.

Meanwhile, Simon petulantly refuses to take part in what he sees as the last act of madness of his well-loved, but, in his eyes, mentally unwell mother.

He eventually relents and joins Jeanne after the revelation of their mother’s imprisonment and subsequent severe abuse, after which Jeanne cannot continue alone.

The twin’s journey is spliced together with Nawal’s story, which coincides with every hint or scrap of story they can garner.

As a viewer, you move along with them, never knowing more or less than they do.

The cinematography moves in much the same way, never straying too far from the twins or Nawal, so that your experience is theirs, making the mystery all the more tantalizing with that touch of human connection.

The film brings you into a world and introduces you to characters that might as well be real.

As the plot unfolds, your sense of connection to the characters and the world they live in make the awful tragedies of their lives inexorably yours, and with heartfelt sincerity elucidates the amazing and atrocious humanity all around us.

Published in Volume 65, Number 21 of The Uniter (March 3, 2011)