The roots movie, in which an individual travels alone or accompanies his or her parent to the Old Country in search of buried familial and cultural connections, is a veritable subgenre of Jewish film.
The most recent example was “100 Voices,” last fall’s record of a Polish concert tour by American, British and South African cantors. But in a multi-culti world of immigrants and refugees, Jews do not hold exclusive rights to films about ancestral homes and histories.
The harrowing, large-canvas Canadian drama “Incendies,” adapted by director Denis Villeneuve from Wajdi Mouawad’s award-winning play, catapults a young French Canadian woman from the academic world of mathematics into the gray-area ambiguity of an unnamed Arab country on a fraught mission to unearth her mother’s past.
Nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best foreign language film, “Incendies” screens Monday, May 2 and Thursday, May 5 at the Sundance Kabuki as part of the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival. The film opens May 6 at the Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.
A tough-minded and occasionally disorienting film, “Incendies” is, in large part, about the suffering and sacrifices that parents refuse to divulge. It’s a familiar dynamic: Bury the past to protect the children, then raise them with the exhortation, “Go, assimilate and prosper.”
Jeanne and her resentful twin brother Simon know only that their mother was born in an Arab land and was scarred by unnamed experiences. Nawal’s death produces a will, and two letters the siblings are charged with delivering to their father (whom they thought was deceased) and brother (whom they never knew existed).
Jeanne accepts the challenge and journeys to her otherworldly homeland, embarking on a stumbling investigation of her mother’s trail. Hampered by language barriers and cultural differences, Jeanne is a fish out of water, but an admirably persistent one.
“Incendies” intercut Nawal’s experiences in the same region 30 or so years earlier, and these extended sequences are the real blood and guts of the film. Thrust into a cauldron of warring Arab factions driven solely by the logic of retribution, we can only watch in shocked silence.
The setting resembles Lebanon in the ’80s and ’90s, with Christians and Muslims engaged in a destructive and pointless civil war. (The playwright, Mouawad, was born in Lebanon in 1968, and has lived in Montreal since he was 15.) There’s an occasional glimpse of an Israeli tank or checkpoint, but Jews are extraneous to this brutal, ongoing family feud.
What we experience, with a jolt, is the chasm between West and Mideast. On one level, Jeanne’s comfortable middle-class complacency runs smack into the hand-to-mouth, day-to-day survival that defines life in this part of the world.
Through Nawal, however, we see firsthand the arbitrary hand of death. The film grants us entrée to a society beyond rational argument and reasoned negotiation, where women and children can expect nary a micron of mercy.
“Incedies” (translated as “Scorched”) is blemished by a crucial coincidence and plot turn in the final reel that tests our disbelief. But the vivid, primal heart of the film beats with such force and fury — like a war dispatch on steroids — that the revelation of secrets becomes secondary.
“Incendies” screens 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 2 and 8 p.m. Thursday, May 5 at the Sundance Kabuki in San Francisco, and opens May 6 at the Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley. For tickets to the Kabuki screenings, visit fest11.sffs.org.