Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe, 2019)

Do I need to hand in my Cinephile Card? I found Fire Will Come to be the single most pointless film I have seen all year. Oliver Laxe and cinematographer Mauro Herce (himself a noteworthy director) produce simply stunning images of the Galician landscape, including misty hillsides and pink / purple skies that resemble Turner canvases. Perhaps if Laxe had simply made an abstract film, in the manner of Lois Patiño, things would have turned out better.

But instead, Fire Will Come is a narrative film with only the slightest wisp of a narrative, a premise so slim as to imply that Laxe himself felt ashamed at the prospect of sullying the basic purity of these people and their rough-hewn, time etched existence with something as vulgar as fiction. So, in the midst of nonprofessional performers all playing characters with their own real first names, we have a mystery plot that comes down to a coin flip. 

Amador (Amador Arias) has just been paroled after two years in prison. He was locked up for arson; he set a fire that destroyed quite a bit of the countryside, and no one knows why. So Amador returns to his village to live with his mother (Benedicta Sánchez), help her with the cattle, and essentially stay out of trouble. But he is awkwardly welcomed back into the community, with some looking at him askance, others treating him with relative sympathy. There's even a vet (Elena Mar Fernández) who seems to have taken a romantic interest in him.

[SPOILERS]

So nothing much happens, and then a massive fire breaks out, one that jeopardizes the lives of numerous firefighters and destroys the homes of numerous villagers. And, since Amador has only recently been released, a lot of the villagers think he's responsible. Laxe doesn't answer the question, instead showing Amador and his mother walking away, leaving us with the knowledge that the man will be blamed for the rest of his life every time someone so much as burns toast.

And that's it. There's a lot of "local color" in the interstices, but all that really accomplishes is pointing to the ambling, observational film that Laxe seems to wish he were making instead. These very different elements are not particularly well integrated, so Fire Will Come just feels like a big shoulder shrug. But other folks found it enthralling, so your mileage may vary.