A poem of matrimony and magma, “Fire of Love” recounts the relationship of Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married team of volcanologist-filmmakers. The Kraffts were known for their inventive exploration and photography of active volcanoes. Their work, which began in the late 1960s, was cut short in 1991 when a pyroclastic flow on Japan’s Mt. Unzen wiped them out along with a group of 41 scientists, firefighters, and journalists. Note that in the preceding sentence, “short” was not preceded by “tragically.” Maurice Paul Krafft and Catherine Joséphine “Katia” Krafft were Alsacian French volcanologists who were inseparable from the moment they discovered their shared passion. They knew the risks of their chosen field and freely accepted them. “I want to get closer, right into the belly of the volcano,” Maurice once said, adding, “It will kill me one day, but that doesn’t bother me at all.” “It’s not that I flirt with death,” Katia said, “but at that moment, I don’t care at all.” Their union not only produced a trove of astonishing imagery that can be endlessly reworked and put to a variety of uses, it gave any future filmmaker who wanted to tell their story a handy metaphor for love, passion, obsession, and commitment. From the opening images of the Kraffts driving a jeep through snowy tundra and pausing to unstick the vehicle from an ice patch, we get scene and after scene and shot after shot that serves its own narrative function while seeming as if it’s also serving as a metaphor or symbol (even when it isn’t). Movies that are made this way can be endlessly re-watchable because they don’t put too fine a point on the various possible secondary associations, instead giving the viewer a bit of room in which to muse and fantasize and make their own connections. Directed and cowritten by Sara Dosa (“The Last Season,” “The Edge of Democracy”) and narrated by filmmaker-actor-artist Miranda July, “Fire of Love” is one of a vanishingly rare breed of documentary that is determined to be “total cinema,” not just capturing the facts of what happened to its subjects but creating an entire aesthetic—a vibe—around them. As directed by Dosa and cut by editors Eric Casper and Jocelyn Chaput (who have already received an award for their work here, and deserve more), “Fire of Love” is not content to toss a series of arresting images collected by other filmmakers on the screen, even though the result still would’ve been riveting even if they had. Instead, they’ve made something paradoxically unassuming yet grand—a movie with a churning, flowing, volatile life force, befitting the topic that obsessed the Kraffts. Like “Apollo 11,” “Summer of Soul,” “The Velvet Underground” and an array of esteemed predecessors (including Godfrey Reggio’s visually driven, quasi-experimental documentaries) this is a nonfiction film that could be shown on an IMAX screen and marketed as a spectacle. This writer saw it on a laptop and was mesmerized by it, but would love to see it projected on an enormous screen someday. Pedro Almodovar once advised young filmmakers that it isn’t enough for a film to move: it needs to dance. This movie dances. It’s never more graceful and on-point than when it’s serving up a series of shots captured by the Kraffts, whether it’s a still image of a hand caressing the ripples in black earth or expressionistic shots of magma cascading through air. The Kraffts were once described by a journalist as “traveling performer volcanologists,” and they liked the description and found truth in it. Dosa’s movie leans into the idea, linking them to a long tradition of naturalist filmmakers that includes their countryman Jacques Cousteau. We’re aware that the Kraffts were using their eccentric charisma and romantic mystique to get themselves (and the viewer) as close to the action as possible. Our awareness of the mechanics of their show is part of the show. Think of a magician telling you about magic while he does tricks. Werner Herzog told the Kraffts’ story in “The Fire Within” and “Into the Inferno,” but in a less cohesive and fully realized way. Herzog’s later work as a nonfiction filmmaker sometimes has a slapped-together feeling (except in “Grizzly Man,” a film with a brutal, telegraphed-in-advance ending that Dosa’s movie evokes). Here, when July’s narration threatens to turn a Herzogian shade of purple, it usually stops short, perhaps trusting that whatever thoughts we might have about the Kraffts and the images they captured will be more personal and powerful than an omniscient narrator’s attempt to sum everything up for us. The movie never succumbs to self-infatuated grandiosity, probably because it’s impossible to stare at images of the earth continually destroying and re-creating itself without realizing how small we are. “The human eye cannot see geologic time,” Krafft says at one point. “Our lies are just a blink compared to the life of a volcano.” Does that mean that the Kraffts great love is diminished? Probably they’d say yes; they were humble about their importance in the greater scheme. But directors keep making movies about them. And as the title of this one suggests, it’s not just the images of erupting and flowing and cooling lava that draws them.
