Kicking off Sundance 2022 on its opening day is filmmaker Sara Dosa’s beautifully-told, almost poetic documentary revolving around volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft. Entirely using archive footage, this stunning piece of work tells their story via a retrospective love letter that engrosses from the off.
Seemingly pulling together hundreds of hours of archive footage and dozens of photographs, Dosa and her team have built a hugely informative piece that not only focuses upon the two souls at the heart of the story but also their mutual professional love; the volcano. Miranda July, our guide on this journey, takes us back to the meeting of Maurice and Katia in the 1960s, the filmmakers’ witty interpretation of how they ‘might have met,’ an initial delight, through to their graduation – he as the geologist and she, the geochemist. The narrative describes them as two forces of nature coming together to form an explosive pairing – very cleverly comparing them to the subject they study in a film that I really got emotionally involved with.
The outcome is laid out before us from the off – the two sadly met their demise together during the eruption of Mount Unzen in Japan in the early ’90s – but the film largely centers on their 25-year career as pioneers in their field, studying volcanos up close and personal, all the while documenting their findings through still images and films, which essentially funded their love of the mountain.
Of late, the mountain-focussed documentary, to excuse the pun, has peaked with the likes of The Dawn Wall, Free Solo, and the more recent The Alpinist over the past few years, but with Fire of Love, you have something similar in the subgenre, but also something very different altogether. I walked away having learned something as well as being completely absorbed in a retrospective narrative.
The Krafft’s beautiful story is enough on its own to warrant the film’s existence, but Dosa turns her figurative lens to the volcano throughout, and through the visual medium, manages to express why the married couple fell for its wonder. The sound is pretty exceptional as well, even viewing the film on a virtual set up away from a cinema auditorium which this exceptional piece of filmmaking is crying out to be screened in. That said, one hopes this does eventually find a streaming service to land on so as many people as possible get to see it. A story of two wonderful souls told with a wonderful tone that both uplifts and tugs deep at those heartstrings.
Fire of Love
Summary
An excellently put-together documentary with a wonderful tone that will pull at the heartstrings as well as engross and educate from the off.
