When I first moved to the States as a child, I heard it being said that Americans always love a winner. It could explain why our politics are so messed up at the moment and yet, we seem to connect with this sense of non-belonging. Like this ruling elite, and whoever represents it, should and do know better than us the people, because after all, they won an election — and along with that their rightful place in the political firmament.
Yet, I believe times have changed and more and more I notice in the media, and on social networks a connection with the underdog. We fight battles for people we don’t know, who represent those who have it rougher than us. While undeniably there are still bullies out there, you know those who will go out of their way to make you and I feel bad about ourselves, the majority of the social media generation is caring towards the less fortunate. They understand and will help the underdog.
‘Fire Will Come’ is a film for them — bullies and judgmental people need not apply.
In fact, Oliver Laxe’s latest film, a 2019 Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner, delves deep into the phenomenon of the underdog and how different people react to someone whose worst sin in life has been to simply not shine, out loud. Amador, a 50-something man with the hair of a rockstar (played beautifully by namesake Amador Arias) is not a winner, but his sultry eyes are full of “duende” — that untranslatable Spanish word I learned in my flamenco days which can only be explained, at its simplest level, as “soul”. He may not be an extrovert, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have emotions worth exploring and great stories to tell. Within him fires burn.
As a premise, in the second scene of the film, we learn that Amador was imprisoned for setting a fire, which he may or may not have set. Galicia, the autonomous community in northwestern Spain most famous for its “Camino de Santiago” pilgrimage, is an area often in the news for its fires. Some are caused by lightning and the weather, while others the result of farmers trying to clear and re-condition their lands. It’s also a tool to put money is some fat-cats’ pockets, by clearing lands so they can be sold and in his director’s notes Laxe points out that “the figure of the pyromaniac is one of the most demonized today,” a convenient antihero. Amador is freed before due time and returns to the rocky, green yet difficult terrain of his mother’s home, Benedicta (played by the 80-something petite and perfectly firey Benedicta Sánchez). She’s hardly one for sentimentalisms and greets her returning son with a simple gesture of the hand and a matter-of-fact “are you hungry?”
Amador Arias and Benedicta Sánchez in a still from Oliver Laxe’s ‘Fire Will Come’
It is in those interactions between mother and son, and their three cows along with Luna the dog, that the soul of ‘Fire Will Come'‘ burns deepest. Their chemistry is wonderful and without a word or even a sound, these two unlikely allies find a rhythm that most cinematic duos never manage. These aren’t professional actors, in fact, Sánchez, a former photographer, won Best New Actress at the 2020 Goya awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars. Arias is instead a forest guard so a film cannot get any more non-professional actors than this!
Fire is often a word used to describe passion, to point to someone who burns powerfully and deeply and in Laxe’s film it provides a wonderful connection between its leading man and the crimes he’s been accused of committing. What doesn’t appear obvious on the outside, burns deep within Amador and perhaps finds a misdirected outlet in setting those blazes.
Once a possible love interest for Amador is introduced in the character of Elena (Elena Fernández), a veterinarian, the film even finds a romantic hero angle for the outsider we’ve by now grown to love and I won’t get into the details of how that relationship turns out. But let’s just say that once an underdog, always an underdog. In real life and at the movies. And the title of the film provides a good hint…
The French born, of Galician heritage Laxe., who made the much beloved 2016 award winning ‘Mimosas’ as well as ‘You Are All Captains’ in 2010, has a way with slow and steady. He can find the poetry in a quiet rainfall and the romance in a daytime car ride, accompanied by Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ playing on the car stereo. His DoP Mauro Herce is the master of making a still moment feel like you never wish it to end. There is a wonderful, natural symmetry to a lot of the images captured on screen, like a simple-man’s Wes Anderson, without the gimmicks and the frills.
And from the first shot, an ominous sequence of the woods which culminates in Vivaldi’s ‘Nisi Dominus, R. 608’ the viewer knows they are in for something big. Bigger than a simple movie about a couple of characters, with plot twists and a predictable ending — ‘Fire Will Come’ needs none of that. To the patient viewer it will instead provides a roadmap for humanity, an interesting study in our own ability to sit still and appreciate what is outstanding beauty on the big screen. And find within it our own sultry, burning soul.
‘Fire Will Come’ is distributed in the US by KimStim and will stream online, as part of the Metrograph’s NYC Virtual Cinema starting October 30th. If you click on the Metrograph link you will also find a Q & A with the filmmaker to accompany the streaming.
Then ‘Fire Will Come’ will begin to gradually be screened around the US starting the weekend of November 6th, at LA’s Acropolis Cinema.