Fire of Love

Let me just say that this film should win this year’s Oscar in the Best Documentary category.

I had the pleasure of seeing this movie with two old friends. Both are bright, funny and very caustic. While neither is easily entertained in the theater, they both recognize a good film when it falls into their lap.

We all felt that this was not just a good film but a great one. It told a powerful story about many of earth’s volcanoes, both now and in the past, that had a mesmerizing impact on each of us.

The movie tells the story of Maurice and Katia Krafft, husband and wife volcanologists. Born in France, they traveled around the globe filming volcanoes as they erupted.

But you need to know that the film begins on June 2, 1991, while our couple were taking footage of Mount Unzen in Japan. Tragically, it erupted the next day killing Maurice and Katia as part of the mountain collapsed.

But this heart-breaking knowledge added to the power of the film. It allowed the viewer to embrace our couple from the time they met in the 1960’s to the following decades where they risk death filming massive lava flows.

You will be glued to your seats as you watch some of the greatest cinematography to ever hit the big screen. Maurice and Katia stand on the edge of red lava streams that explode in massive red cinders that fill the screen.

Ironically the film is really not a love story. Our couple tolerate their occasional excesses as Maurice does the filming and Katia takes the pictures. He jokes on film that their relationship was “volcanic”. She smiled in response.

This film is a great cinematic experience. Maurice and Katia accepted the risks involved in exploring volcanoes so that mankind could save many humans by learning when a mountain danced on the edge of an eruption.

Let me just say that the love in this film represented an audience’s attachment to our wonderful couple. Sure, they died at the top of their game, but they both lived by the motto that it was better to die young leading an exciting life rather than to grow old living a boring one.