Sundance 2022: Fire of Love
Katia and Maurice Krafft (Sundance Film Festival)
The Earth gives birth on hidden plateaus right above the meeting point between two tectonic plates. At first it looks like a hellscape. Red lava splatters against black rock like paint. Alternatively, stories-high plumes of grey smoke loom over the ground below. It's almost too unfamiliar to identify as our own world. That is, until we see who's situated in the foreground of each staggering shot: two little people. Sometimes they’re dressed as 1950s-style sci-fi protagonists in head-to-toe aluminum. Sometimes in matching bright-blue windbreakers and red beanies. They’re always there, staring at the end of the world.
Their names are Katia and Maurice Krafft and they are bound, in marriage and in life, by their one true passion: volcanoes. The world’s only romantic pair of traveling volcanologists (circa 1980), they are also the subjects of Sara Dosa's documentary, Fire of Love, premiering this week at Sundance.
Fire of Love follows the life of the Kraffts from their first date in the mid-60s to their eventual deaths caused by the 1991 eruption at Mount Unzen in Japan. The film consists almost entirely of found footage recorded by Maurice, Katia, and their friends on their various volcanic expeditions.
On its own, the footage that they captured over several decades is truly astonishing. The film opens with a series of shots, all taken from different angles, depicting a man (Maurice) shoveling snow and ice out from under the tires of his all-terrain, Jeep-esque vehicle. The camera captures him driving up a rocky surface in a thick haze, getting out of the car once it hits ice, shoveling, proceeding and driving off. I felt certain while watching that this was a reenactment or a contemporary figure who had carried on the Kraffts' legacy. It’s neither. Just Maurice. And he recorded everything. Dosa and her team parsed through hundreds upon hundreds of hours’ worth of footage, condensing and synthesizing liquid gold. Every frame, however casual, is a painting.
Most notably, of course, are the shots of live volcanoes. Time and time again we hear Maurice and Katia describe their passion for their work, their sustained disbelief at the enormity of these natural creations. It’s energizing to listen to, but that spoken passion only becomes real and clear via the things they chose to film.
Early excerpts of the footage capture flat, black rock oozing out steam and magma after being curiously stepped on. Later on, we see geysers firing off jet after jet of hot lava as the Kraffts (and the camera) sit mere meters away. Interspersed throughout are grand-scale portrait scenes showcase the unbelievable, anxiety-inducing maneuvers that Maurice and Katia execute to get as close to the action as possible. They're off on the horizon line practically playing together under the glow of imminent danger. This footage alone makes the film worthwhile.
Dosa and her team deserve a great deal of credit for the way they structure and enhance the inherent power in what Maurice and his colleagues captured. Fire of Love boasts an unorthodox tone and feel. Both the film description and Dosa’s virtual introduction make reference to the French New Wave and lyrical storytelling. While relying primarily on found footage, she also interjects countless stylistic flourishes that help emphasize the enormity of the Kraffts’ love of volcanoes and love for one another. Frequent use of animation or abstract imagery elevates moments of thoughtful contemplation provided either by the film’s narration or Maurice and Katia’s voices. These animated scenes take illustrated documents (primary sources, maps, diagrams) and bring them alive via movement and coloration. These moments help imbue the film with an off-kilter, fanciful style in keeping with Maurice and Katia's personalities.
The film is narrated by Miranda July, whose delicate, breath-laden whispers gently guide the viewer through the constant intensity and frequent levity. All the same, July's ability to project a sense of curiosity and wonder through tone and intonation go a long way towards executing the content of her narration, written by Dosa and her collaborators. Early on in the film July muses on Katia and Maurice’s kismet kinship, saying "Alone they could only dream of volcanoes. Together, they can reach them.” This type of fluid, poetic observation runs deep through the film.
The narration can come off as forced and overwrought at times, though one can always sense Dosa’s deep admiration for her subjects. One-off moments like when July states declaratively that Maurice is an elephant seal and Katia is a bird can remove the viewer from the film’s narrative flow. Though, in the grand scheme of things, it’s hardly out of place. While these observations may not always land, they’re always consistent.
There are scant moments where you can feel Dosa's hand on the wheel as she tries to usher the audience towards certain feelings. She includes two noteworthy song choices in the film: Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship” and Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold.” Both feature in the types of scenes one might assume. “The Big Ship” is meant to capture overwhelming love and spectacle, similar to how it was used in films like The End of the Tour and Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl a few years ago. “The Ecstacy of Gold” plays over a shot of Maurice and Katia riding on horseback across vast terrain. They’re easy choices that can prompt an eye-roll or two, but that kind of over-the-top sensationalism rings true to the Kraffts’ larger-than-life aspirations.
The film is at its best when it cuts, somewhat frantically, between television interviews, intimate recorded moments, and footage of live volanoes. These three modes capture the totality of the Krafft experience in rapid sequence. Their lives consist of shared isolation and necessary publicity. Maurice’s command of the talk show sphere becomes even more admirable in immediate contrast to his quiet moments of intimacy with Katia. In conversation together, opposite an interviewer, their love is almost overwhelming. To see the unrelenting extent of it, one need only look at Katia’s eyes as she listens to Maurice wax poetic and tell jokes.
They died together, side by side as a gust of burning-hot ash consumed the land around them. They met young, bonded over their disillusionment with the world, and sought to explore a higher power: volcanoes (and, by extension, the Earth). In doing so, in diving deep into the heart of chaos and creation, they absorbed the energy of their surroundings and fed it into one another. Maurice captures her on film, time and time again, joking and performing to him, as though he were the last person alive. In the immediate wake of the volcano, he is. She’ll point her camera at her, looking to bottle his essence in the form of still photographs. Their fascination with each other mirrors their obsession with their work. They were meant to be together, truly.
In the waning moments of the film, Maurice expresses an even-keeled understanding that he’s going to die at the hands of a volcano one day. Katia echoes the sentiment. And then the final cloud comes. An abandoned camera sits on a tripod as scalding-hot air billows down from the mountaintop, suffocating the greenery. Somewhere off-screen Katia and Maurice stand, sit, lay down, or embrace. "I follow him," Katia says at one point, "because, if he's going to die, I'd rather be with him." Together they were found, The Two Maidens of Pompeii, eternally bound in the wake of the volcano.