Incendies is not a difficult film to fathom, but you will have a difficult time getting this film out of your mind. That’s a good thing.

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has fashioned a modern day tale of tragedy that begs comparisons to Greek theater. The style isn’t classic drama however so much as non-linear storylines that culminate in great revelations.

Brother and sister Jeanne and Simon (Melissa Desormeaux Poulin, Maxim Gaudette), twins, are given instructions per their mother’s will that sends them half way around the world to search for a brother and a father that they never knew. As they travel to the Middle East to investigate their mother’s past the film alternates between scenes set in the present and those that depict their mother’s travails.

Villeneuve presents a harsh world where brothers kill sisters because they love a different clan, where soldiers kill children because they happened to be on the wrong bus, or where prison guards randomly torture inmates simply because it’s how they’re wired. You rarely see these characters smile since their common experiences are so grim. So when they do let a glimmer of happiness cross their visage it practically counts as a plot twist.

The background to the story constantly involves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even as we’re putting the pieces together in the jigsaw narrative there’s a constant feeling that Incendies will link the common tragedy of the script across generations.

Incendies was nominated for best foreign film, losing out to Susanne Bier’s In A Better World. Incendies, opening this weekend exclusively at the River Oaks Three, is packed with powerhouse moments that precisely define the madness of conflict.

- Michael Bergeron