by Herbert H. Stein
I don’t know how many readers of International Psychoanalysis have seen the French Canadian film, Incendies. For those who have not seen it, I must warn you that this article will include important “spoilers,” so reader beware.
It is an award winning film, highly acclaimed, that brings the viewer to the horror and cruelty of war and of ethnic hatred amidst a story of incredible courage with the inevitable accompaniment of intense trauma. But that is not why I particularly bring Incendies to your attention. I thought that it might be of interest to analysts because it bears striking parallels with Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (perhaps more properly Oedipus Tyrannus).
The plot revolves around a young woman, Nawal Marwan, living in Lebanon (although the country is never named in the film or the play from which it was adapted). She has committed the unpardonable sin of taking a Moslem refugee as her lover. He is killed by her brothers as she watches. They are about to execute her as well when her grandmother intervenes. She is exiled in shame from her village, sent to live with an uncle in town; but, when civil war breaks out she returns to the south to find the baby that she bore from that love affair. Through Nawal’s eyes, we see incredible cruelty. She is the only survivor of a bus filled with Moslems heading south, saved by the cross she wears around her neck when Christian militiamen slaughter everyone. She tries to save a little girl, on the bus with her mother, but sees her gunned down as she tries to run back to the burning bus where her mother’s body lies.
Nawal offers her services to the Moslem militia under Chamseddine, and successfully assassinates the head of the militia that had committed the atrocity. She is imprisoned and tortured for 15 years, but maintains her integrity. Years later, living in Canada with her twin children, something precipitates a breakdown, sending her into a catatonic state. In Nawal we see how resiliency can co-exist with breakdown in the same victim of trauma.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud likens Oedipus Rex to the work of analysis, as Oedipus pursues the truth about his past. As in analysis, there are two loci of action: the “present,” in which Oedipus slowly uncovers the truth; and the past, which gives meaning and motivation to the present. As in an analysis, the viewer learns about the past only through words, yet much of the action of the story is in that past. The plot is set in motion when Oedipus is told that to lift a plague from the land, he must find the murderer of Laius, the former king and former husband of Oedipus’s wife, Jocasta. It is through his quest for the truth that the entire traumatic story is brought to light.
Incendies also begins with a command to seek the truth about the past. As with Oedipus Rex, that truth has to do with a traumatic family history involving murder, incest and the abandonment of children. It is told from a different perspective, that of Jocasta and her children, and some of the events are displaced, but I think the reader/viewer will recognize the essential plot.
In a scene reminiscent of the opening of another film, The Bridges of Madison County, a son and daughter, in this case twins, are set on a strange quest by their deceased mother, a quest that pushes them to uncover secrets about her, their own origins and their family. After a brief opening scene, whose significance we cannot understand until we are nearly at the end, we find ourselves in the office of a notary, Jean Lebel, who is opening the will of a his former secretary, Nawal Marwan, for her twin son and daughter, Simon and Jeanne.
In the will, after leaving her total possessions to her twin son and daughter, Nawal gives strange burial instructions, that she should be buried “naked, face down” with no casket or stone. “No epitaph for those who don’t keep their promises.” She goes on to assign parallel tasks to each of her children, that each should deliver a sealed letter, Jeanne to her father, whom she must find, Simon to his brother, whom he must find, adding, “When the envelopes have been delivered, you will be given a letter, the silence will be broken, a promise kept, and you can place a stone on my grave and on it engrave my name in the sun.”1 With this we have both a mystery and an apparent paradox. The children understand that their father is dead and have never heard of a brother. Like Oedipus, they are about to learn some startling truths about their origins and their family history.
Following Freud’s comparison of the action of Sophocles’ play with the work of an analysis, it should come as no surprise to us that Oedipus shows great ambivalence in his pursuit of the truth about his origins. In the twins’ reactions, we see elements of both sides of Oedipus’s ambivalence. Jeanne accepts the task of finding her father and resolving the mystery, pursuing the story at its roots, her mother’s native land, while Simon is angry and dismissive, calling his mother crazy. His intention is to ignore the will, bury his mother in a “normal” manner and not buy into her craziness. Oedipus attacks the messenger, Creon, who brings him news from the oracle that he, Oedipus is the murderer they are seeking. Simon is more polite, but somewhat curt and dismissive of the messenger, Lebel.
As analysts, we expect such ambivalence about the secrets of the past, buried in unconsciousness, but reaching out through transferences and other reminders of action and thought that carry an erotic connotation. As viewers, we are moved by curiosity, and less so by fear, for we are removed from ownership of the dynamics that are to be uncovered. Nevertheless, the film will take us into some areas of traumatic witness.
In the scene following the reading of the will, as we gaze upon Jeanne, we hear words obviously intended to put us into her inner world as she faces her new journey, although outwardly spoken by her mentor as he addresses a new class in “pure mathematics.” Fortuitously for us, it also suggests what is faced by someone entering into an analysis.
“Now you are embarking on a new adventure. You will face insoluble problems that will lead to other, equally insoluble problems. Friends will insist that the object of your toil is futile. You’ll have no way of defending yourself for the problems will be of mind-boggling complexity. Welcome to pure mathematics and the realm of solitude.” (italics mine)
Her mentor, Niv, encourages her on her journey of enlightenment, telling her, “You just learned that a, your father is alive, and b, you have another brother. What’s ridiculous is to challenge the inevitable. You have to know or your mind will never be at peace.” Something similar could have been said to Oedipus, and to many of our patients.
Whereas Sophocles’ play tells us of the past only through words, the way we hear about it in an analysis, Incendies uses the modern vehicle of “flashback” to bring that past to life.
The first two flashbacks are somewhat brief, and like the opening information in an analysis, come to us at a point in the story at which we can’t fully understand them. The first is the opening scene of the film in which we see a group of boys, somewhere in the mid-east, having their heads shaved. The focus is on one particular boy as the camera pans down to his ankles and feet, revealing something that we may not even see at that point because its significance is only revealed later.
The second flashback is to Nawal’s “accident,” as Simon refers to it in talking with his sister. We see it through Jeanne’s mind’s eye. She is at a community swimming pool when she sees her mother sitting on a lounge chair, staring into space. She is unresponsive to her daughter’s pleas for her attention, and we soon see that Nawal has lapsed into a catatonic state.
It is presumably through the mind of Nawal, lying in bed in that catatonic state, that we see the drama of the past. That drama takes place in her native country, given no recognizable name in the film, but clearly Lebanon. We witness Nawal experiencing horrific trauma in the days of the civil war in Lebanon.
As we follow that story with Oedipus in mind, we will see that the elements of the story have been jumbled. We are following the story from the point of view of Jocasta, Nawal, and her children. Like Jocasta, Nawal experiences the death of her first lover at the hands of a family member, but in this case at the hands of her brother. Nawal is an adolescent girl in her small village, running off on a secret rendezvous with her young lover, Wahab, the son of a “refugee,” and presumably a Moslem. The couple are ambushed by Nawal’s brothers, who shoot and kill Wahab at point blank range, then are about to shoot Nawal in the back of the head for disgracing the family, when her grandmother intervenes, shooing them off as if they were naughty children.
Like Jocasta, she must have her infant son taken from her, not because he is prophesied to kill his father, but because the love that bore him has already killed his father and because his birth is a scandal to the family. Nawal tells her distraught grandmother that she is pregnant. The grandmother keeps her with her through the pregnancy, but the infant is taken away to be sent to an orphanage. This part of the Oedipal tale will be repeated in a different form later in the film.
As with Oedipus, in the process of sending him from his home, the baby’s identity is marked by something done to his ankle. The name, Oedipus, we are told, means “clubfoot” or “swollen foot,” the effect of having the baby’s ankles pinned together. Nawal’s baby’s feet are not mutilated, but the grandmother makes a mark of three vertical dots on the back of one ankle, we realize later for identification. Nawal says goodbye to her baby boy, promising that she will find him one day. As in the Oedipus story, the action begins with a baby being sent out into the world without identity except for the markings on his feet.
The story now follows, in parallel process, Nawal’s journey through the treacherous world of the Lebanese civil war and her daughter, Jeanne’s progress attempting to retrace her mother’s steps to find her father and brother. Nawal, as an adolescent and young adult, gets caught up in the civil war. As war is breaking out, she decides that she must attempt to find her son. She attempts to trace him to the orphanage to which he was taken, to find that it was being evacuated and that the boys had been moved to another orphanage further south. She makes her way through the war zone, is nearly killed and watches the murder, by a Christian militia, of a busload of innocent Moslems, including a mother and young daughter.
Embittered, Nawal offers her services to the Moslems, under Chamseddine and succeeds in assassinating the leader of the Christian militia that had killed the people on the bus. In prison, she endures torture and deprivation, winning widespread admiration of those in the prison as “the woman who sings” for her continual singing which she uses to drown out the sound of other prisoners being tortured.
Her daughter, Jeanne, has difficulty finding anyone who knew her mother at the university where she had studied. She goes to her mother’s village to find that she is not wanted there because of the scandal that her mother had created with her illicit love affair. Jeanne perseveres, nonetheless, and is eventually led to the prison based upon a picture that her mother had left behind. She finds someone who knew her mother in the prison and learns the story of “the woman who sings” and of Abu Tarek, the torturer who raped her and impregnated her in the prison.
Now, Jeanne believes she has drawn closer to finding the missing brother. At this point she is joined by her twin, Simon. He still has no desire to pursue the mystery, but goes with the notary, Lebel, in order to retrieve his sister. At this point, the chorus takes a part, in the form of the brotherhood of notaries. Lebel has contacted a fellow notary in Lebanon, who has perused records and found the nurse who midwifed Nawal’s baby in prison.
By the time they track down the elderly nurse in a hospital bed, we, the viewers know what they will find. It is a story that once again parallels the story of the baby, Oedipus, being handed over to a servant to be taken into the wildnerness to be left for dead. The plan for the offspring of Nawal’s rape is similar, drowning in the river. But as in the Oedipus story, the bearer, in this case the nurse, cannot commit the deed.
In a dramatic scene with the twins and Lebel and an interpreter standing around the bed, the nurse is told that these are the children of “the woman who sings.” She becomes tearful and ecstatic and greets them warmly as they learn that they were the children born to Nawal in prison. Like the servant who bore Oedipus, she has saved the children, but in this case, she was able to return them to the mother when she was released from prison. In the two births, Nawal’s children recapitulate Oedipus’s experience, one boy being sent away from his mother, but not to his death, and the later twins being taken from her to be killed, but spared.
It has often been pointed out that in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus has enough information to figure out what happened. He has only to put the various pieces together, but he resists the unwanted truth. Here, too, the twins should have been able to make the simple calculations about time and age to realize that they were the babies born in prison. We suspect that they get lost in the story as it unfolds and do not want to believe that they were born out of torture and rape and that their father is the notorious torturer, Abu Tarek.
But the brother is still to be found. The notaries uncover records that begin to point them towards the brother. He was sent off to an orphanage. The orphanage birth records lead them to an orphan born in May, 1971, who was given the name Nihad de Mai. Here the official record breaks off. The notary suggests that to find out about Nihad, they must get in touch with the Moslem militia leader from that time, Chamseddine.
Now, it is Simon who must pursue the trail. He has learned about his mother’s traumatic and heroic past. Together with a guide, he goes to the south to seek Chamseddine and is finally taken to him with great drama and secrecy as Chamseddine is still in hiding.
Now the film once again gives us parallel images. We see Simon walking from one car to another in the desert, but the scene subtly shifts and we see Nawal entering into a car to meet with Chamseddine, who tells her that she will be helped to emigrate with her twin babies. He is here a fatherly figure.
We shift back to Simon’s meeting with Chamseddine, in a private room, surrounded by body guards. He tells Chamseddine that he is seeking Nihad of May and that the birth records from the orphanage have shown that Nihad of May is his brother. Chamseddine empties the room of all but one other man and speaks directly to Simon, who is permitted to remove the mask from his eyes. He explains that he and his followers had killed the villagers where the orphanage stood out of revenge for the killing of refugees by the Christian militia. They had saved the children, however, and had raised them to fight alongside them. Nihad was with them.
“Nihad had a gift. He was special. He quickly became a formidable marksman. But he wanted to find his mother. He searched for months. I don’t know what he saw or heard. He became crazed with war. He came back to see me. He wanted to be a martyr. His mother would see his photo on every wall in the country. But I refused. He went back to Daresh. He became the most dangerous sniper in the region. A real machine. He would shoot at anyone. And then there was the enemy invasion. And one morning, they captured Nihad. He’d killed seven soldiers. They didn’t kill him. They trained him and sent him to Kfar Ryat prison.”
Simon asks, “He was in prison?”
“Yes. As a torturer.”
“With my father?”
“No. He didn’t work with About Tarek, your father.”
The scene shifts to a hotel room. Jeanne enters the room to join her distressed brother.
Simon: “One plus one makes two.”
Jeanne: “What?”
Simon: One plus one makes two, it can’t make one.
She feels his face, says he is feverish, but when he asks her, “One plus one, can it make one?” she thinks for moment and with a huge gasp, a look of shock comes across her face.
We are taken back to the scene at the swimming pool. Now, we see it through Nawal’s eyes. She is swimming and sees the back of a man’s leg standing by the pool. He has the three vertical marks on his ankle, the marks implanted at birth, the marks that meant nothing to us in the opening scene on the ankle of a boy whose head was being shaved. She approaches him, can say nothing and settles in on the chaise, going into a dissociative state.
Now, we hear the voice of Chamseddine like the Greek chorus:
“When he became a torturer, your brother changed his name. He became Abou Tarek. Nihad of May is Abou Tarek. We know he’s living in Canada under a new identity, Nihad Harmanni.” As in the Oedipal tale, mother and son are reunited in sexual union, in this case in the form of rape.
Now the drama draws to a close. We see the twins approaching their father/brother and handing him a manila envelope. In it he finds the two letters from the will. He reads the first, “Letter to the Father.” It is in Nawal’s words and we hear it in her voice.
“I’m shaking as I write. I recognized you. You didn’t recognize me. It’s magnificent, a miracle. I am your number 72. Our children will deliver this. You won’t recognize them for they are beautiful, but they know who you are.”
Nihad dashes out the door, but they are gone.
The letter goes on, “Through them, I want to tell you that you are still alive. Soon you’ll turn silent. I know. For all are silent before the truth. Signed, Whore 72.”
The second letter, written to the brother, says, “I speak to the son, not to the torturer. Whatever happens, I’ll always love you. I promised you that when you were born, my son. Whatever happens, I’ll always love you. I looked for you all my life. I found you. You couldn’t recognize me. You’ve a tattoo on your right heel. I saw it. I recognized you. You are beautiful. I wrap you in tenderness, my love. Take solace, for nothing means more than being together. You were born of love. So your brother and sister were born of love, too. Nothing means more than being together. Your mother, Nawal Marwan. Prisoner Number 72.”
This Oedipus learns the truth from the posthumous words of his Jocasta.
Now, Lebel reads to the twins, “When the envelopes have been delivered, you will be given a letter, the silence will be broken, a promise kept, and you can place a stone on my grave, and on it engrave my name in the sun.” He hands them her letter. Simon opens it and they read together as we hear it in their mother’s words and voice.
“My loves, where does your story begin? At your birth? If so, it begins in horror. At the birth of your father? Then it begins in a great love story. But I say your story begins with a promise to break the chain of anger. Thanks to you today I have finally kept it. The chain is broken. Finally I can take the time to cradle you, to gently sing a lullaby to console you. Nothing means more than being together. I love you. Your mother. Nawal”
The film ends with a lone man, Nihad, standing at his mother’s grave.
The story parallels the Oedipal tale in many ways, but it reverses it in one way that is crucial from the analytic point of view. For Oedipus, the uncovering of the truth is itself traumatic. Jocasta kills herself and Oedipus blinds himself and then goes into exile, a tragic figure. This is hardly a good analytic outcome. In Incendies, the trauma is in the past and uncovering it helps to relieve the mother, posthumously, of her burden of guilt over promises unkept. It helps the twins to understand their mother and to recognize her traumatic past and her courage in coping with it. It offers the lonely Oedipus some measure of forgiveness and reunion with the mother he never knew as a mother. Here we have a sibling of Oedipus Rex in which uncovering the truth is healing.
Originally published in the PANY Bulletin Spring, 2012.