Few researchers in any field have lived more spectacular visual glory than Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married couple of Alsatian volcanologists who chased their obsession around the world before finally being consumed by it. Fire of Love tells their story – or, perhaps it’s fairer to say it, illustrates it – using scads of the breathtaking 16mm footage these two filmed on their adventures.
They didn’t tiptoe into the mouths of active volcanoes, but picnicked expectantly, waiting for the fireworks. Whenever a Nyiragongo trembled or a Krakatoa burped, it was likely that Katia and Maurice would be there, ready to examine the behavior of these beasts up close: they often posed just a few feet away from the hellfire spewing. These photos taken by Maurice of little Katia, in a silver aluminized suit, with large walls of lava glistening behind her, are nothing short of fascinating.
The particular mindset it must have taken to so often ignore personal safety, anything to add to the sum of the world’s volcano knowledge, is always so lightly considered – “the unknown is not something to be feared, but something to go to,” Katia tells a TV interviewer. Overall, Sara Dosa’s film is less interested in psychological profiling or expanding our understanding of this science than making an elegant awe-inspiring.
It’s easy to imagine Werner Herzog‘s fascination with these lives on the abyss. Not only were the Kraffts, and their eventual fate, a cautionary tale in his Netflix documentary Into the Inferno (2016), but his next, The Fire Within, focuses entirely on them. Seeing a different angle, Dosa runs off with it, emphatically hiring Miranda July to do the voiceover.
With their matching blue parkas and red toques, the Kraffts look creepy as members of the ensemble cast Wes Anderson‘s The Life Aquatic (2004). These French eccentrics with cameras – whose great love for each other we should essentially trust – have been given an Anderson-esque treatment here: The Life Volcanic.