Deepdive: Nawal Marwan, 'Incendies'.

 

The ways of the world are strange. Even Dostoevsky once remarked in jest that an unjust man sleeps better than the just. The Great John Lennon said, “we hide to make love whereas violence is practiced in broad daylight”. How easily are bad things normalized and routine, whereas the good things and things that matter have to be done in hiding. The battle for the good is tough, to be on the side of the good, tougher.

 

Dennis Villeneuve’s ground-breaking film ‘Incendies’ (2010) is a journey of two siblings, Jeanne Marwan and Simon Marwan to find a few truths after their Late Mother Nawal Marwan leaves behind two letters for them. Nawal Marwan is a woman who lived an anomalous life but died knowing the truth. She spent her whole life searching for something, avenging something only to come to know that 1+1=1.

 

While Nawal faced ordeals of her own, starting from her affair with Wahab and his being killed because of political issues, she had resilience of character to give up her son when she was carrying Wahab’s child and going to the University and be a pioneer of ideas and always wanting to find her son, to actually looking for him when attacks on her University and subsequently her country ensue and attempting to save a non-Christian child at the time a bus filled with non-Christians was attacked, Nawal Marwan had seen much of life’s harsh realities and strove to keep her children away from that.

 

It is easy to resent someone when their situation is not known to the world, much easier to judge someone. Only the ones who has been most responsive to change and the ones who bring about the change make an exception to this statement. They understand. Nawal’s life was a cycle of suffering, surrender and lastly, the truth.  As Jeanne and Simon Marwan try to navigate the truths of life after their mother’s passing, they also navigate their own truth and while the truth can make us free, it can also imprison us in its shackles.

 

Nawal was an aggressive woman who could never forgive and never forget, and rightly so, considering her situation and even then performed a Herculean task of keeping a lot of things from her children even when they grew up makes her stand out and also brings forth one of the truths of motherhood: its tenderness; because no matter how old her children grew to be, she did not want to shatter their world and their idea of what their world was. While telling someone we love the truth takes courage, sometimes, hiding that truth takes courage as well.

 

‘Incendies’ (2010) was very Shakespearean in its portrayal of Jeanne and Simon, and asked the audience a fundamental question: who is a bad person? Does a situation determine that, or do actions despite the situation? The same question is raised in a completely different context.  a South Korean film titled ‘Forgotten’ (2017). Nawal’s character is one that the audience respects, empathizes with and admires. She is a person who has had all the experiences a person would not wish upon their enemies.

 

Rumi said, “those pains you feel, listen to them. They are messengers”. But what if some people never grow out of it? What if some people are meant to live the tragedies that was their life? While resilience gets a person somewhere and bad times eventually die, it is equally true that some people have to wait their entire lives for a ray of hope, something to live for, Nawal’s life had only one highlight: Jeanne and Simon.

 

‘Incendies’ (2010) was the story of Nawal Marwan’s life at the outset, it was essentially the story of the love of a mother. Nawal lived a life for her children and gave them the best: a better life, access to better opportunities, and the most important of all: a life away from conflicts between religions and full of diversity. As Jeanne grows up to be a mathematician, she becomes Nawal’s pride and Simon’s source of support.

Nawal was repressed as she was not allowed to love the one person she loved the most and losing him broke her. Her whole life was an attempt to do good despite the bad things in the world. It is not surprising that she was known as the one who sang every night in prison. Everyone who met her in her young age remembered her, admired her and respected her.

 

Nawal Marwan is one of the rare characters who instill awe, respect, admiration and even pity in her children as well as the audience all at the same time. Her resilience and the will to stop at nothing for her children is nothing short of great. She definitely deserves to be celebrated!

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Author: Ms. Radhika Sunil Vaidya. 

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