Fire of Love

 

Director Sara Dosa

Miranda July with Sara Dosa

FIRE OF LOVE             B+                                                                                                             USA  (98 mi)  2022  d: Sara Dosa

Well worth seeing for the breathless footage of volcanic activity, images of unmistakable beauty, yet this adrenaline addiction to volcanoes and the urge to move uncomfortably closer also reveals an underlying death wish that feels highly disturbing, where a shocking SID AND NANCY (1986) suicide pact is on full display, though achieved by different means, but the tragic results are the same.  Presented as a love story, the film mirrors the love of Katia and Maurice Krafft with the dangerously beguiling object of their desire, as the married volcanologist couple spend years filming and recording volcanic eruptions together, literally exalting in the fascinating allure of volcanoes, yet they died doing what they loved most while documenting a 1991 volcanic explosion in Japan.  All of the volcanic footage in the movie is archival, with no new additions other than random incidental shots and some brief comic animation, with an unobtrusive narration by filmmaker/artist Miranda July that at times suggests a poetic rapture, often reading passages from Katia’s books, discovering nearly 200 hours (with no sound), mostly consisting of 16mm camera footage and photo stills of the Krafft couple’s trips to active volcanoes around the world, shooting much of the material themselves, with contributions from colleagues and friends, such as photographer Henry Glicken (The Short and Wondrous Career of Harry Glicken) who died alongside them.  In America, there is an equally strange phenomena of photographers who love to chase after dangerously developing weather patterns in an endeavor known as Storm chasing, where they drive in their cars in a mad dash straight into the eye of the storms as they pursue thunderstorms or tornadoes, risking life and limb in the hopes that their photos or film footage will be used in national news broadcasts across the country.  You don’t expect a documentary about volcanoes to begin in freezing temperatures, but the first scenes find the Kraffts struggling to free a jeep from being stuck in the icy slush of Iceland.  What’s unique about this film is that audiences learn almost immediately that the couple perished in 1991, so the entirety of their footage was shot beforehand, with their story reconfigured through a modern lens, told in the present, as if from beyond the grave, yet the power of the imagery survives the decades.  Both born in the war-torn Alsace region of France, separated by just 20 kilometers, they became inseparable, supposedly meeting on a bench at the University of Strasbourg in 1966 and got married in 1970, spending their honeymoon on a trip to Stromboli, an island off the north coast of Sicily that’s home to three active volcanoes, pushing bicycles to the summit carrying crates of equipment, wearing bell-bottomed jeans that developed holes whenever they got too close to the hot spewing gases, photographing a near continuous interruption, deciding immediately that they would have no children, proclaiming instead that “from hereon out, it will only be volcanoes, volcanoes, volcanoes.”  Having fallen in love with volcanoes as young children, they pursued a scientific education, with Katia becoming a geochemist and Maurice a geologist, and together they wrote scientific papers and authored nearly 20 books, with Katia documenting volcanoes through photography, while Maurice worked with video.  According to Katia, “Once you see an eruption, you can’t live without it.  Curiosity is stronger than fear.”  For two decades in the 70’s and 80’s they were the only volcanologist couple roaming the planet, known for being pioneers in filming, photographing, and recording volcanoes, venturing into dangerous situations that virtually no one else would ever consider, often approaching within feet of lava flows.  This inherent closeness with danger recalls a similar fate of Timothy Treadwell from Werner Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN (2005), a man who tempted fate, venturing over the precipice, obtaining uniquely personal footage of Alaskan grizzly bears that no one else could obtain, yet he lost his life in the process.  Maurice was both philosophical and even a little flippant, having stated that when he died, “I want it to be at the edge of a volcano.”  Midway through the film he adds a darkly poetic and chillingly prophetic credo, “Maybe you need a certain philosophy of existence to take on these volcanic monsters.  I prefer an intense and short life to a monotonous, long one.  A kamikaze existence in the beauty of volcanic things.”

Katia Krafft is short, likes to wear a red knitted hat with practical clothing, as they’ve learned it can easily get burned, wearing a trademark shortly cropped hairstyle with oversized granny glasses that she has worn since the 1970s.  Maurice Krafft is taller with a more sturdy and muscular build, characterized by his curly hair and piercing laugh, overly confident and gregarious, who typically takes more chances.  Completely infuriating his wife is his insistence on rowing a rubber raft purchased from a second hand store over the world’s largest acid lake in Java, a 600-foot-deep lake filled with sulfuric and hydrochrloric acids fueled by gases from hot magma below, displaying a turquoise color that looks serene and inviting, but would immediately dissolve a person’s skin, and devoured a steel cable attached to a collecting bottle, while Maurice also had a lifelong dream to ride a canoe down a lava flow into the sea.  “We devoted ourselves to volcanology because we were disappointed in humanity,” Maurice says at one point.  Defying danger and educating the public for over twenty years, the Kraffts saw the field of volcanology as a way to distance themselves from humanity in the face of the atrocities seen in the Vietnam War in the mid-1960’s.  Obsessed by what they would discover, hooked on the adrenal rush of excitement while also finding solace in the natural world, they remained fascinated by the majesty of a nature that human beings could not tame, beautifully expressed by  Maurice as “beyond human comprehension.”  They took an early trip to Iceland in 1968 to visit the Krafla volcanic crater, not knowing what to expect, where their rental car broke down 27 times, yet there’s footage of Maurice accidentally scalding one of his legs while standing in a burning hot volcano pit.  Undeterred, they voraciously read everything they could to learn about their field, constantly thinking about the Earth and moving tectonic plates, driven by an exploration of the unknown, coming at a time when not much was scientifically known about volcanoes, using only the most primitive equipment for their research, yet their fearlessness was unique, getting closer than anyone else, taking measurements, getting samples, and documenting eruptions.  Traveling the globe, visiting nearly 300 volcanoes, they gained more experience with each encounter, capturing volcanic eruptions of Mount Nyiragongo in Zaire in 1973 and again in 1977, the Piton de la Fournaise in the Indian Ocean’s Réunion island and Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau in 1979, the state of Washington’s Mount St. Helens in 1980, Indonesia’s Una Una in 1983, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa in 1984, Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz in 1985, and finally Mount Unzen on the island of Kyushu during their fateful trip to Japan in 1991.  Assembled with a restored brilliance of 4K sharpness, aided by editors Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput, the footage is drop dead spectacular, like something that should be viewed on an IMAX screen, with shots of volcanic eruptions, bubbling lava, and huge clouds of ash, with fiery red lava flows streaming by, while they stand on the volcanic edge documenting what they see.  Easily the eeriest photos are of the two of them wearing what resembles Flash Gordon silver Tin Man space outfits they designed themselves, heat and fire resistant suits specifically built to protect them from the intense heat, documenting what at that time was considered the most incredible volcano footage ever filmed, Fire of Love Clip | Documentary | National Geographic YouTube (3:21).  That distinction may actually be surpassed today by 2010 footage obtained by Geoff Mackley, Bradley Ambrose, and Nathan Berg of the Marum volcano on Ambrym Island, part of the archipelago of Vanuatu just off Australia in the South Pacific Ocean, El Volcán Más Increíble de Todos los Tiempos - YouTube (1:53), where respirators have been added to those starkly recognizable space suits, as normally one might withstand this heat for just 6 seconds, but this allows them stand on the edge and see the amazing spectacle for over 40 minutes.  

Completely self-supporting, working for no one except themselves, the Kraffts became known as eruption addicts, adrenaline junkies, having climbed half of the world’s 500 volcanoes and witnessed more than 140 eruptions on every continent except Antarctica, often setting up camp for days at the lip of boiling craters, with molten rocks dropping around them and fire spurting half a mile high, while accumulating the most extensive collection of volcano art, including rare books and films.  On a French radio interview, Maurice is asked about classifying volcanoes, claiming any such categorization should be banned because each volcano has a distinct personality of its own, yet the couple does classify them by color, identifying red volcanoes as the nice ones, defined by the constant flow of red lava, formed when tectonic plates are pulling apart, with lava filling the void, suggesting they look spectacular but are predictable, “no more dangerous than walking on a road in Belgium,” according to Maurice, while the grey ones are the killers, the explosive ones, resembling atomic bomb clouds, formed when tectonic plates are coming together, creating a combustible force that is much more challenging due to their unpredictability.  Early in their careers they focused entirely on red volcanoes, shifting to grey much later, and in fact they were killed by a grey volcano, erupting for the first time in two hundred years, thinking they were at a safe distance two miles away, as experts predicted a big explosion was not imminent, but a billion tons of molten rock pushed up from below as they were engulfed by a high-temperature cloud of ash and died instantly along with 39 other people, Mt. Unzen dome collapse triggers the pyroclastic flow that takes the lives of Maurice and Katia Craft YouTube (1:12), reminiscent of the avalanche in Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (Turist) (2014).  Katia was 49, and Maurice was 45.  They knew how unpredictable volcanoes could be, having studied the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique, producing 100 miles per hour winds of 500 degrees Fahrenheit, the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century when the town of Saint-Pierre was destroyed and up to 30,000 lives were lost in just seconds, leaving only two survivors.  If their deaths tell us anything, it is that geologic time continues to confound us, as no one can predict what will actually happen with volcanoes.  Until a few days before Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 79 A.D., no one even knew it was a volcano.  500 million people around the world now live near volcanoes, and over the years the Kraffts made it their mission to educate local officials about the dangers.  The 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz was Colombia’s worst natural disaster, the second-deadliest volcanic disaster of the 20th century, killing more than 23,000 people, as mudflows towering nearly 30 meters high swept through the countryside wiping out the town of Armero, killing 70% of its residents while they slept.  The Kraftts warned officials ahead of time about the impending disaster, urging immediate evacuation to spare lives, but their pleas were ignored, deemed too costly, causing them insurmountable grief afterwards by the unnecessary loss of human lives, devastated that science was not taken seriously, as it became apparent that studying the volcanic phenomena was irrelevant if they could not help avoid such human catastrophes.  One small consolation is that Nevado del Ruiz is now considered one of the most closely monitored volcanoes on the planet.  According to William Durant, American writer, historian, and philosopher, “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”  Part eulogy and part celebration, the film is ostensibly a love story about the Kraffts, where their professional career is inseparable from their romantic partnership, yet it’s also a requiem for the beauty and utter devastation of their work, elevating our appreciation for volcanoes, which may help explain some of the hidden mysteries of the planet, and even the universe, but continue to perplex us with so much remaining out of our grasp.   

Something in the Dirt

 

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

SOMETHING IN THE DIRT                       B                                                                         USA  (116 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

LA is like Halloween, but like all the time.

I might be one of the first people in the universe to taste an interdimensional fruit.  If I die doing that, I’m fine with that.                                                                                                        —John (Aaron Moorhead)

An offbeat film that actually toys with the territory of Shane Carruth’s PRIMER (2004), a remarkable low-budget sci-fi puzzle film evolving into the mysteriously inexplicable, playing the same kind of psychological mind games with the audience.  While it doesn’t have the logical consistencies of PRIMER, or the wonderfully concise editing style, it does attempt to explore the cosmos through a frazzled LA mindset, where the mysteries come fast and furious, none of which are remotely explainable, offering a kind of mathematical weirdness into another dimension, where a special mention must go out to sound designer Yahel Dooley.  One may add this film to a long tradition of eerie LA movies about a strange consciousness surrounding the laid-back subculture of Southern California, which might include Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946), a crime caper which is more about atmosphere than plot (shot entirely on the Warner Bros. back lot), Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD (1950), where the Hollywood dream is transformed into a terrible nightmare, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), a wonderfully seedy L.A. private-eye tale that takes us to the brink of the apocalypse, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), revealing the moral rot of Los Angeles, Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), where the history of the city is built on beautiful illusions that amount to little more than lies and deceit, Tobe Hooper’s POLTERGEIST (1982), revealing a suburban haunting in Simi Valley, Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), uncovering a world of corrupt politicians and dirty murders, the Coen brother’s  The Big Lebowski (1998), paying tribute to marginalized Southern California eccentrics, David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), a love poem to all those who have been tragically haunted by the Hollywood dream, David Gordon Green’s stoner movie, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008), which may be best watched high, and more recently David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake (2019), a coded clue movie that takes conspiracy theories into new heights.  At the forefront of DIY low-budget, independent filmmaking, making stories that are uniquely their own, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, making their fifth feature together, wrote, directed, produced, shot, edited, and starred in this film, mostly taking place in Benson’s own apartment, a minimal production conceived as part of the crazy restrictions from the Covid pandemic lockdown in 2020, yet despite the restrictive setting, this is an expansive, mind-altering film exploring the fundamentals of physics that may have heads spinning trying to figure out what’s happening.  What starts out as an easy going buddy movie quickly morphs into a paranoid sci-fi conspiracy theory thriller, as we discover mathematical equations written on a closet wall, apparently left by a previous tenant, but no one’s lived there in ten years.  We also find a creaking door that won’t close, a dripping ceiling, and then levitations and strange light formations that suggest paranormal activity, leading to a tumble down a rabbit hole (or wormhole), with pseudo-science and conspiracy theories galore, evolving into a film-within-a-film, with found footage and mockumentary talking head interviews that clarify absolutely nothing, but only add to an enveloping confusion, with the protagonists eventually losing themselves to random Reddit/QAnon theories that become larger than life, swallowing them up whole and spitting them out in a sci-fi spoof of the cosmic enigma with infinite molecular possibilities, mirroring the cultural fascination to forget about science and believe just about anything.  As if stating the obvious, an amusing theme is introduced early, “Is it possible this is extremely dangerous and we overlooked that part?”  Particularly impressive are the jarring montage of images filled with childhood memories, a personalized abstraction that only briefly appear, adding a peculiar insight into character, yet blend into the complexity of the visual design.  A film about filmmaking itself, it has a special dedication, “To making movies with your friends.”

Justin Benson (who wrote the script) is Levi, having recently been fortunate enough to discover this dark and grungy, yet dirt cheap apartment in the Hollywood Hills, sight unseen, intending to use it short-term as a crash pad while he sidelines as a bartender, tending to unfinished business until he can depart for the next town, as he’s something of a burned out bohemian surfer dude who has a tendency to move around a lot.  On his way out the door he discovers his neighbor, Aaron Moorhead (handling the camera) as John, quickly bumming a cigarette as the two exchange niceties, the only two living in the apartment complex, discovering John is a wedding photographer and former math teacher who recently divorced from his gay partner, and may be connected to a massive evangelical church, while Levi seems to be haunted by earlier undisclosed events that include legal issues and family trauma, with John offering furniture kept in storage, while the camera seems to focus on a myriad of electronic connections that emit a strange humming noise.  What’s also significant is the quick juxtaposition of an interview with Dr. Rita Miller (Sarah Adina Smith), a chemist offering her professional expertise, referring to a personal tragedy that resulted from their film project, apparently splitting them apart, suggesting she believes at least some of what we’ve witnessed is real, yet we haven’t a clue what she’s referring to.  The city of Los Angeles also becomes a prominent character with recurring images of low-flying airplanes passing overhead, while the buzz of helicopters is constantly heard tending to a nearby fire in the hills, with smoke billowing in the distance, with a strange reference to a coyote on the loose.  Yet when John helps him move the furniture, a quartz crystal they’ve been using as an ashtray suddenly levitates, refracting strange light patterns against the wall, yet in an instant it’s gone, with both acknowledging that something very strange just happened, refusing to believe what they’ve just seen.  But when it happens again, they’re convinced they’ve opened a portal into another dimension, believing an alien presence may be secretly inhabiting the closet, transmitting an oppressive heat, which may be their natural habitat, forcing them to keep the windows open to keep from sweltering, with Levi developing a peculiar habit of sitting on the outside landing, both continually chain smoking cigarettes as they furiously discuss all the possibilities of what they might be experiencing.  Following all clues, thoughts jump out of their heads about the Morse code, the golden ratio, the Pythagorean Brotherhood, aliens, ghosts, and numerology, with John carrying around a book entitled Geometry of Magnetism, where every symbol suddenly has meaning.  They decide they need to document this supernatural phenomena, convinced no one would believe them otherwise, quickly agreeing that filming their own documentary is the way to go, with dollar signs racing through their heads, a supposed panacea for their desperate need for cash.  At one point, hoping to interact with the spirit, John makes a hilarious request, “If you’re a ghost, do something!”  In reference to the weird heat source and inexplicable light coming from the closet, John wants to call their film “Something in the Light,” while Levi prefers “The Door That Wouldn’t Shut,” yet when they finally set up for filming, another phenomenon mysteriously reoccurs, but the camera hard drive melts and the phone SD card is full, so they get no footage.  Levi is convinced they need to upgrade their equipment, quickly reevaluating their plan, both excited about this harebrained scheme, but they are amateurs continually screwing up in comical misadventures, where something inevitably goes wrong, with Levi pondering, “Sometimes I wonder if these two things are just you and me, one of them manipulating the other into an endless rabbit hole going nowhere, and the other one just implicitly going along with it because he wants to believe in something different than his actual life.”  A comment on the isolation and loneliness we all feel being cut off from each other during the pandemic lockdown, perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is the formal construction of different levels of observation, as on the one hand, there are the phenomena that occur around the protagonists, on the other hand, we are immersed in a documentary that they themselves are filming, with interventions by various scientific experts, and finally, we can’t help but be influenced by the documentary nature of the film which introduces fragments of real recordings on which these wild theories are based.         

As they immerse themselves in this project, both seemingly outcasts running from their pasts, an internal paranoia sets in, with John in particular growing suspicious when he finds Levi’s name on the sex registry list, where he’s required to do community service.  While Levi initially expresses reticence about even discussing the matter, with a flood of childhood images offering obscure references, including a mysterious death of his sister that has left him emotionally scarred, he eventually confesses that it’s all a mistake, as what he’s really guilty of is public urination on the walls of a daycare center, as he couldn’t find any public rest room facilities nearby, a far different crime in his eyes, which seems to satisfy John at first, but over time their relationship fractures as this growing distrust only magnifies their obvious differences, with the more self-absorbed John continually probing into the complicated ramifications of mathematical equations and ratios, yet exhibiting an arrogant sense of superiority, ultimately dismissing not only Levi, but everyone else’s opinion, while the more laid-back and emotionally damaged Levi begins to see John as an intractable apocalyptic evangelical extremist with fascist tendencies, an authoritarian control freak who’s also a compulsive liar.  The developing intimacy between them is appealing, two wacky characters we enjoy spending time with, as the emotional journey arguably means more than any sense of wonder from the sci-fi twist, yet it soon turns into the enveloping craziness of being trapped in a closed environment for some length of time, feeding off of each other’s weaknesses and obsessions, leading to extreme paranoia and suspicion.  Both seem to lose interest in any actual explanation for the occurrences they witness so long as they can earn gobs of money, but how they intend to sell this product is vastly different, never really working in tandem, as John’s ego seems to take over the project.  It becomes hard to distinguish what might be the effects of an earthquake and this bizarre activity, so they bring in supernatural experts who offer a running commentary on camera, with the film attempting to recreate their own experiences, with both continually exploring a myriad of controversial theories, like the CIA’s Project MKUltra, a mind control project, or the Jerusalem syndrome, while also discovering a manuscript with every line redacted except for five numbers, none of which seems to make sense, yet plays out on camera with a kind of mind-altering curiosity.  By restaging heavily edited and manipulated events juxtaposed against the actual experience, the filmmakers successfully blur the line between what’s real and imagined, becoming an abstract mosaic where it’s hard to tell the difference.  Both of them discuss the theories and various connections, continually trying to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, like being stuck in a time portal, developing a strange, dreamlike feel that seems to have its own logic, unfolding like a fever dream that could just be taking place inside their heads, which is part of the strange appeal of this film.  Attempting to integrate everything into this theory of coincidences, it could be aliens, ghosts, or any number of explanations, where their lives have otherwise stopped as they explore these possibilities with an adrenal rush, with characters pontificating on life and the universe, while calmer voices of experts continually intervene offering their own findings, with a chemist even evaluating dirt samples for radiation, with viewers immersed in this mad dash to find meaning.  The very fabric of Los Angeles comes into play, exploring graveyards, studying the original design by the initial city planners, or following a GPS destination out in the desert, becoming a parody of the paranormal documentaries so commonly found on streaming platforms.  Continually seeking explanations, which are shared on camera, they are clearly having a difficult time not only with each other, developing a near pathological hatred for one another, but also any sense of where this all leads and how they can wrap up their documentary, which becomes this mythical quest into the unknown, perhaps losing themselves in the process.  Defying all explanations, suspiciously weird activity continually dominates the screen, with revelations about Levi’s sister’s death causing reverberations of grief and childhood trauma, yet over the course of the film we discover our narrators are not entirely reliable, having succumbed to their own irrational delusions, where one of the most mystifying moments is seeing John wrapped in plastic, like a deranged homeless person, supposedly protecting him from excessive radiation, eying a doomsday scenario that could spell the end.  It’s an elaborate construction of narrative labyrinths leading nowhere, leading to information overload, where by the end, we are left with an empty feeling.  The camera angles seem to find their faces fraught with emotion and anxiety, caught in the rapture of exploring something bold and new, yet there is also pain and sorrow written on those faces, growing weary over time, where a tragic sadness sets in with the exhaustive toll this takes, their lives unfolding like the Matryoshka doll wind chimes hanging just outside John’s apartment, resonating like tinkling bells, evoking sounds as mysterious as the wind.