Fire of Love

So first the documentary itself. It's skillfully done and smooth to the end. The pace is perfect and every 10 minutes there are these small intermezzos of fun between Katia and Maurice. In all these short quotes of them, you can sense there commitment to each other and to their work.

Speaking about work. Respect for this team. These are all recordings of other people you have to work with and create a story out of all these hours of scenes that look the same but are from different times and different locations.

The foley work is a little bit to exaggerated. All these footsteps and noise sounds. You can almost picture someone stepping into some gravel with a microphone next to it.

About the voice over. Unbelievable this wasn't redone. It feels like the text was sent to Miranda July without any video material and she recorded everything with her phone in a bedroom. Why Sara Dosa approved this or anyone else, is a mystery. It really makes the film more dull than it really is.

This film tells the story of two scientists who study volcanoes, which leads to their marriage and shared research. The setup might have been too sentimental for my taste but director Sara Dosa sure knows how to tell a story, bringing together amazing archival footage, the most amazing of which features the couple that undertook this dangerous and wonderful work. This was one of the best films at Sundance in 2022.

Katia, Maurice and the volcano: a fiery menage a trois that will not end well, unless of course, it really is better to burn out than to fade away. For a movie that begins with a startling spoiler (our French lovers succumb to their lust for lava), "Fire of Love" spends the entirety of this documentary giddily championing our infectiously doomed couple as they crisscross the globe in search of volcanic activity.

Not flighty danger seekers, the Kraffts were dedicated volcanologists and filmmakers who faced danger with acceptance but also with a joie de vivre. Among spectacular in situ footage we are also treated to Maurice peppering the talk show circuit, eagerly detailing their latest escapades with boyish exuberance, some humour, and scientific wonder.

This is a man who professed his greatest wish in absolute seriousness was riding a canoe down a river of lava. Instead of shooting down this frivolous dream, Katia notes that it would have to be made of rocketship grade metal. All that is missing is a steady rain of heart emojis throughout the screening. It makes one want to dispatch for the nearest eruption. Almost.

This is where film comes in: we can enjoy an exciting, dangerous dance with death, learn a few things, and cherish the power of unbridled love. A raison d'etre shared, is what makes the world go round, or explode.

A bientot.

HipCRANK.

Gorgeous volcano footage captured by the subjects of the documentary. But I could really do without the breathy, disinterested female narrator, acting like all life is a passing dream. You don't learn very much about Maurice and Katia's work except that they sure did love volcanos!

I ended up having similar feelings with this documentary as I did with "The Biggest Little Farm": A film made for California hippies who want to gaze wondrously at nature without actually learning anything.

I think that I would be more inclined to seek out the films which Maurice and Katia created themselves, rather than watching this one again. But this is a decent, pretty-looking time killer.

Fire of Love is about two people who are married and also happen to be volcanologists, and the life they spent together, filming and photographing volcanoes and all the crazy natural phenomena that comes with them. The film is assembled from the apparently 100s of hours of footage they took, with a few creative liberties taken here and there to fill in some narrative gaps of things they didn't film.

It's a simple, touching story that gets very emotional at times. It's also beautiful to look at, with some amazing footage captured by the film's two subjects. Given most of the footage is from the 1970s and 80s, I'm guessing a lot of it's been restored; at least the shots they could. And then even the lower-quality images or damaged pieces of film still provide breathtaking sights. You understand the awe and wonder these two people felt around volcanoes, and similarly, you truly feel how destructive they are. It's also uses music well (including tracks from Brian Eno and Ennio Morricone!)

Its simplicity does lead to some scenes feeling repetitive. I'm thankful it was only 97 minutes, because that would have been a bigger problem had it been longer. Also, while some of the editing and scene transitions are great, a few don't flow well. And also, there's a surprising number or volcano eruption jump scares, which I didn't love, but maybe I only jumped a bit because I was sitting near the front of the cinema.

Overall, really good, borderline great documentary. Awards shows seem to nominate documentaries randomly, but if they take things seriously this year, Fire of Love should get some nomination love. I doubt there'll be five other 2022 documentaries that are clearly better (okay, the new David Bowie one, Moonage Daydream, might be. Also excited to see that).