Incendies

Denis Villeneuve - 2010
Ah, the tracking shot. Some here that redeem the film (and the world). After a rather underfed mucking around, cutting around, opening, a track on that single access (Resnais, insistence...) into an eye. Tracks into a group, or along with walking. Truth.
There's, with this, quite a bit of unnecessary foreshortening of shots and cutting around some very static staging (bit thin to argue it is content-wise justified, but possible). One wants the shot to go on in a longer frame. Some of these can be good, using non-centered framings of the people. Though this itself can also be opened to censure as their are some nasty tendencies of aestheticism of a pretty grim situation.
About as grim as the acting and the script, though we can get around that. Overall, I rather liked the direction, the tracking and the long shots. The plot has some good moments, a few truish ones, though centrally this is something of the Tintin about the adventures of an ingenue abroad that seems to all go very smoothly. We usually know a little more than they do, but the characters aren't really interesting enough to allow suspense. And the ending is of course absurd, deadly in its lack of realism, hammering home and by that succeeding in undermining the message of the cycles of violence.
Despite all these points, it did give us a look at something; uneasy as I am at the lack of specific location. Some problems, bad bits, but really more good than bad.