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.   

Madeleine's Madeleine

Director Josephine Decker

 

The director chats with Ashley Connor about shooting a scene

 

Actress Helena Howard with director Josephine Decker

 

MADELEINE’S MADELEINE                    B+                  

USA  (93 mi)  2018  d:  Josephine Decker

The emotions you are having are not your own, they are someone else’s.  You are not the cat — you are inside the cat.

―opening line spoken in a blur

This is a workshop film, developed out of innumerable improvisational rehearsals, most leading nowhere, but at some point something clicked.  Revitalizing the outdated mode of Living Theater, apparently drawing the lines of what appears to be a Redux version of Rivette’s Out 1 and Jacques Rivette R.I.P.  (1971), a mammoth 775-minute epic work that evolves out of theatrical rehearsals, never really preparing for the staging of a live performance, but simply putting in the work to examine one’s commitment to process, where theory supersedes reality, which takes a backseat in this film.  Instead this entire film takes place between the lines, real or imagined, exploring what’s taking place inside one’s head, enamored with the idea of creation itself, with ideas spewing out of a vacuum of nothingness, drawing upon personal experience, encouraging people to reach deep within, then overpraising the outcome, pleased with the theatricality of the moment, offering rewards for the improvisational effort, though not necessarily for any meaningful breakthrough that connects with the audience.  Instead it’s a series of moments, each broken down into collaborative improvisational workshops that highlight and accentuate the personalized nature of what they are doing, drawing attention to the creative process, but not necessarily leading us anywhere.  It’s a unique form of theatrical experimentation, where the courage of conviction is impressive, though it’s extremely limited in terms of having an overall impact.  Instead it builds a stream-of-conscious collective that is constantly changing, yet evaluated and reflected upon throughout, where the audience is intrinsically engaged, even if they don’t know how.  While Rivette throws a narrative bone to the audience, using a clever board game whodunit style mentality, offering clues with accompanying detective intrigue throughout, Decker (a performance artist turned filmmaker) refuses to use any compromise measures, remaining narrative free, allowing free association techniques to weave their way through the entire film, including dramatic mood swings and more than a few queasy moments, creating a cinema of discomfort, challenging the audience to see through a maze of illusion, only occasionally offered strands of connecting tissue.  Something of a head trip, people are continually placed outside their comfort zones, including the audience, but most especially the central characters who are urged to expose their innermost insecurities and fears, creating a dark palette, often overshadowed by a bold sound design that brilliantly counters what we see onscreen, offering a counterpoint, with brash percussive music composed by Caroline Shaw that includes choral music, where the film largely accumulates multiple layers of an untold story, arguably the best edited film of the year, casting a web of intrigue, emphasizing the confusion and personal horrors associated with things we feel but cannot see.      

Helena Howard is Madeleine, a precocious biracial teenager who may suffer serious mental health issues, stressed out by her overprotective relationship with her mother Regina (Miranda July), causing huge mood swings of depression and futility, feeling like a caged bird that can never fly, frustrated at home, disconnected at school, hoping to find her voice through an experimental and culturally diverse theatrical troupe led by an ambitious and very pregnant white director, Evangeline (Molly Parker), who attempts to establish some degree of order through the inflicted group chaos, acting out troubled feelings as a kind of group therapy, using facial masks to hide their identity, finding situations that don’t fit, like animals that can’t speak, or people in distress that can’t escape, creating a kind of unified dance choreography, each mirroring the other.  But where this all leads is unclear, as Evangeline nurtures Madeleine while continually changing her mind about how she envisions their mission, often baffling her own troupe, who work hard establishing character, only to throw it all away for something as yet unknown.  The continuing thread throughout it all is Madeleine, the newest and youngest member, who seems to have the most emotionally invested, constantly encouraged by Evangeline, like a teacher’s pet, who is clearly a substitute for her own mother, yet places her in dangerous and potentially unhealthy situations.  What isn’t clear is how much if this is imagined and how much is real, recalling Spike Jonze’ Being John Malkovich (1999), as the entire film could be taking place inside the mind of a distressed teenager, who is acting out her innermost feelings in imaginary ways, perhaps inventing an alternate reality, but filled with real instead of imaginary people, always placed in difficult situations, like a labyrinth, where she’s forced to find her way out.  What’s real in the film are the internal feelings causing the distress, something most can easily relate to.  How it’s handled, on the other hand, is starkly unique, delving into a deeply disturbing interior world, then offering untried art therapy solutions that may or may not be beneficial, much like evaluating a Montessori school against a public school, as one rigidly relies upon grades and test scores, while the other accentuates a more free-form individualized approach.  Like falling into the fever dream of a rabbit hole, this impressionistic mosaic of a fractured psychology describes the many levels of artistic intent, including anxiety and self-doubt, yet underneath is a fierce independent spirit yearning for expression, inhibited and throttled somewhere along the way, growing distorted and disfigured, even grotesque, searching for a missing ingredient or healing path that wipes all obstacles out of the way, becoming a swirling symphony of voices all searching for the purity of that one grace note, like a cleansing breath, an uncluttered thought, or a moment of clarity. 

Her mother shows concerns that Madeleine’s out of control, off her medication, becoming more and more unreachable, prone to making poor decisions, like an instance when she invites a few young boys into the basement to watch porn movies.  All of this suggests she’s crying out for attention, growing ever more desperate, resorting to any means necessary, where the theatrical troupe becomes a means to express the inexpressible, becoming a surreal, nightmarish adventure, much like Bergman’s HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968), which is itself a struggle for personal sanity, using dreams that rise to the surface in an examination of the creative forces within.  In Madeleine’s eyes, her mother, and perhaps all authority figures, are synonymous with the overcontrolling Nurse Ratched from Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a cruel, overbearing, and nitpicking force of cruel dehumanization, eventually taking radical measures to drive her out.  This power play may all be taking place in the deep recesses of Madeleine’s mind during a recent hospital visit to the psych ward, perhaps sedated into a state of powerlessness, where the film is a recreation of her mixed emotions, with layer upon layer of competing forces all fighting for expression.  What’s perhaps most surprising is Evangeline’s interest into delving into Madeleine’s admittedly damaged personal life, making that the feature attraction of the entire troupe, which feels not just personally invasive, but more like theft, delving into racial appropriation while calling it a “group” collaboration.  Yet she is thrust into the spotlight, even when it appears unhealthy to do so, where the expression of pain and disappointment is often written all over Madeleine’s face, plunged into extreme depths of emotion, from the giddiness of her first kiss to being a loner, an outcast, a primal screamer, cruelly forced to share the limelight with her own mother, immediately overshadowed by her unwelcome presence, inappropriately invited to join the theater group by Evangeline, catapulting into centerstage status, becoming the new class darling, pitting mother against daughter, forcing Madeleine to take extreme measures to claw her way back into favor.  Along the way it’s a bumpy road, a glimpse into personal crisis mode, where survival instincts kick in, yet we sense an acute vulnerability, especially her degree of loneliness and isolation, often struggling with identity and self-esteem, and fighting to overcome overwhelming odds.  Like Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), this unflinching autobiographical journey may initially be misunderstood, though it’s likely to be considered among the more creative efforts in recent memory, a bold declaration of fierce independence, which feels like fighting your way out of a dream.  The film is daring and unconventional to be sure, but to what end?  In some ways it’s reminiscent of Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color (2013), in particular the mindboggling narrative incoherence, relying upon a stream of impressionistic imagery mixed with a completely mysterious sound design, producing something obtuse and phantasmagorical, which may make sense to a few, who will love it, while the rest will simply tune it out as indecipherable.  Not sure where this will end up, as it’s received much critical acclaim, but viewers are sure to be baffled by what it’s all about.