The Weekly Gravy #121

Fire of Love (2022) – ****

What do you build a marriage on? Attraction, even passion, are helpful in the beginning – they draw us together. But what keeps us together? Mutual interests? To a degree. A fascination so intense it determines the course of one’s life? Maybe – if you share the same fascination to the same degree. Katia and Maurice Krafft did, sharing a devotion to studying volcanoes that took them all around the world, from rivers of lava to lakes of acid, and finally to their deaths – at the exact same moment.

One might say it was kismet. They were born at around the same time (Katia was four years older), in around the same place (Alsace in northeastern France), and when they met at the University of Strasbourg, they found in each other the perfect partner for every aspect of their lives. As we get to know them, we see how complementary they are: the petite, mild-mannered Katia, who prefers to observe and analyze, and the burly, jovial Maurice, who wants to get as close to the volcano as possible – dreaming of constructing a canoe that he can ride a lava flow in.

We get to know them through their appearances on French television (they were popular guests and happy to talk about their work) and through their own footage, which they shot incessantly. Here, as with the stunning footage unearthed for 2019’s Apollo 11, we get the undisputed treasure of the film. Here, we see the strange, often frightening beauty of the volcanoes, which the Kraffts divided into “red” and “gray.”

Red volcanoes are the kind that emit hot lava – the rivers of molten rock that glow stunning shades of red, orange, and yellow, quickly cooling to a basaltic black, looking like nothing so much as a kind of primordial custard (yes, the lava looks rather appetizing at times). These, the Kraffts explained, are relatively safe; assuming you’re not in the way of the lava, you’re quite all right. Just keep a safe distance and watch the show.

The gray volcanoes, however, spew hot ash and mud, erupting under intense pressure and with little warning. These, the Kraffts realized, are the most dangerous kind – Mt. St. Helens, Nevado del Ruiz (the volcano behind the Armero tragedy), and Mt. Unzen, the Japanese volcano which would claim the Kraffts’ lives, are all gray volcanoes, whose actions are difficult to predict and, once they erupt, very hard to escape. It’s fitting that their plumes remind one of the atom bomb.

The footage is simply some of the finest volcanic imagery I’ve ever seen, a testament to the Kraffts’ aesthetic skills and personal tenacity – which is underscored by the opening scenes of their driving through wretched terrain to reach a volcanic crater; they may suffer for their passion, but they won’t be deterred.

We also get some modest, faux cut-out animation and narration delivered by Miranda July; her delivery tips into whispered-profundity mode in places, but for the most part it does a good job of linking together the stages of the Kraffts’ lives and linking the scientific aspects of their work with their personalities and private lives – which are necessarily dominated by their work. And we have a fine soundtrack dominated by the work of Nicolas Godin (it’s not clear which pieces if any were written for the film).

Combined with the smartly judged editing and the overarching vision of director Sara Dosa, it makes for a first-rate documentary – perhaps one that could have used just a few more hard facts, but one which capably tells the story of the Kraffts and their love, and brilliantly conveys the fascination, fear, and affection they felt for their volcanoes.

Score: 87

Devotion (2022) – ***½

It’s rather strange how closely Devotion parallels Top Gun: Maverick, and how neatly it also runs perpendicular to it. Both films feature Glen Powell – there in a key supporting role, here as a co-lead – both films deal with American naval aviators, and in both films one of the main characters takes an enormous risk to save the other, ending with them both on the ground in hostile territory. But where Top Gun is a fictional story set in the present, Devotion is a true story set during the Korean War. And where the risk pays off in Top Gun and the film ends on a note of triumph, in Devotion, it only pays off in that a wounded man didn’t have to die alone. Perhaps that’s part of why Top Gun was a huge hit and Devotion was a flop.

It didn’t deserve to be, though. Set in 1950, it follows the careers of Ens. Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors), the first African-American pilot in the history of the U.S. Navy, and Lt. Tom Hudner (Powell), who’s assigned to the same unit as Brown and gradually forms a friendship with him over the following months, as their unit trains with a dangerous new plane (the F4U Corsair), is assigned to the Mediterranean, and is finally sent to Korea, where what the film calls “the forgotten war” is just breaking out.

During the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Brown’s plane is damaged, and he puts down in a clearing but ends up trapped in his plane. Hudner crashes his own plane and tries to rescue Brown, but cannot, and Brown, just before dying, sends Hudner on his way (a helicopter has come for them) with a message of love for his wife Daisy (Christina Jackson). The guilt stricken Hudner conveys it, and we learn that, decades later, he would try and negotiate with North Korea for the return of Brown’s remains. (As of now, they have not been.)

Throughout the film, Hudner has tried to be a capital-A ally to Brown, standing up for him against the racist bullying he encounters (from one obnoxious Marine in particular), despite Brown’s insistence on fighting his own battles. As he says, “Don’t throw a life saver, Tom, just get in the damn water.” It makes for a subtle but welcome retort to the white-savior tropes often found in such films, just as the depiction of the prejudice Brown encounters in the course of the film is, for the most part, quiet suspicion and patronization rather than showy cruelty – it says what it needs to and continues with its story.

And the film focuses as much on Brown’s acceptance by his unit and his love for Daisy and their young daughter; the scenes of them as a loving, often playful family help to balance the tense excitement of the military elements. The most harrowing moments, indeed, come when Brown himself looks into the mirror and recites the various epithets hurled at him by his enemies (he’s been writing them down for years). It’s a clear showcase for Majors’ acting, as he puts himself through a storm of emotions, and he pulls it off.

It may well help that director J.D. Dillard is African American himself – and, I learn, the son of a Navy pilot. That would suggest this story is very close to his heart indeed – and might help explain why it seems to hew pretty close to the facts. Yes, there are embellishments – I don’t think the unit actually hung out with Elizabeth Taylor (Serinda Swan) in Cannes – but most of what happens in the film, including the tragic climax, is true.

That Dillard’s direction is quite solid certainly helps; the combat scenes are suitably visceral, the flying scenes are thrilling, and the emotional scenes are moving. Best of all – and kudos also to cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt – is the aforementioned climax, which features a long take encompassing Hudner’s crashing his plane, his rush to Brown’s side, and his initial efforts to help. It’s just a well-done scene which conveys the desperation and, well, devotion of the moment, at the heart of a well-done film which capably tells an important story.

Majors and Powell (who just looks like he belongs in Golden Age Hollywood) are both very good, leavening their heroics with a need, at times counterproductive, to prove themselves, whether it’s Brown risking himself to take out a bridge or Hudner starting a fight to protect his friend. They’re well supported by Jackson and Thomas Sadoski as their sardonic commanding officer, and solidly by the rest of the cast, including Joe Jonas (who provided an end-credits duet with Khalid), while the technical aspects of the film are themselves uniformly solid.

That includes Chanda Dancy’s score, which made the Oscar shortlist (although it’s a long shot for a nomination), which is expectedly sweeping and stirring but adds touches of prickly tension and anxious enthusiasm to keep us engaged. I’m glad it was at least noticed, given how little attention the film has received otherwise. Some who have discussed the film have criticized it for not delving more into the politics of Korea (and the decades of tension and anxiety which followed it), and while that’s not unreasonable, for me this is story of a man and his sacrifice, and it tells that story well.

Score: 83

Corsage (2022) – ***

It might be fitting that Corsage doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be, since it deals with a woman who was given so little room to be herself. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, here played by Vicky Krieps, was given in marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Techtmeister) as a teenager and spent the next 44 years enduring court politics and many personal tragedies, culminating in her assassination. Corsage takes place in 1877-78, long after the death of her daughter Sophie and well before the death of her son Rudolf at Mayerling, before even the death under mysterious circumstances of her beloved cousin Ludwig II of Bavaria (Manuel Rubey) – and I mention these events, undepicted in the film itself, because the more you know about Elisabeth – a legendary figure in Austria, the birthplace of writer-director Marie Kreutzer – the better you might understand what this film is trying to do.

Elisabeth was famously unhappy, finding the atmosphere of her husband’s court stifling, being obsessed with preserving her beauty and maintaining a trim figure with tight corsets (to which the title refers) and a fearsomely sparse diet, struggling with depression and restlessness which found an outlet in constant travel, regular horse-riding, and, at least in this film, an impulsive streak which frustrates not only Franz Joseph but even Rudolf (Aaron Friesz) and her youngest daughter, Valerie (Rosa Hajjaj).

Over the course of the film, Elisabeth visits the inmates at a local asylum (with whom she sympathizes), is tempted by an affair with British horseman George Middleton (Colin Morgan), manages her husband’s affair with Anna Nahowski (Alice Prosser), has her own complex relationship with Franz Joseph, is filmed by Louis Le Prince (Finnegan Oldfield) a decade before Le Prince’s first known films, is prescribed heroin for her troubles, cuts her hair (a big deal; Elisabeth was notably dedicated to her hair), and eventually commits an act which the real Elisabeth certainly did not – but Kreutzer may have intended it symbolically. I’m not really sure.

Nor am I sure what she intended with the anachronistic touches. The use of modern-day music on the soundtrack and the bits of jerky proto-cinema are the most obvious, but a close look at the sets will reveal bits of modern furnishings – a 20th-century telephone here, a floor lamp straight from any modern furniture store there. Most of the time, it feels more like a budgetary consideration turned half-heartedly into a feature. At least to me.

That, however, is a minor concern compared to the issues with Kreutzer’s script. Individual scenes are quite solid, thanks to her direction, the handsome cinematography, the lush costumes and palatial sets, and the acting. But there’s a lack of momentum, of real narrative drive to link them together, and I found myself wondering just where the film was going with its dramatic and thematic threads. I’m not sure the ending, whatever other issues I have with it, is especially well justified by what comes before it.

As such, while Krieps is very good and gets across so many of the facets of Elisabeth’s character – the restlessness, the puckish humor, the melancholy, the sense of being alienated from some essential part of her own nature – the lack of a clear arc, at least to my eyes, keeps her from giving a truly brilliant performance. She has especially good support from Teichtmeister as the priggish but loving Franz Joseph and Rubey as the sadly eccentric Ludwig (here, essentially, her Gay Best Friend); Teichtmeister gets one of the film’s early laughs when he reveals that Franz Joseph’s prodigious muttonchops are fake.

Actually, the early scenes and the trailer suggest a bit more of a dark comedy than this film ends up being, and I’m not sure a little more humor – a little more lightness – wouldn’t have been welcome. Not that Elisabeth’s life wasn’t, at its core, a rather sad one, but this film doesn’t really grasp at the full scope of her tragedy either. It’s not a bad film by any means, but for me it just doesn’t add up to very much. Maybe that’s what I get for not being Austrian.

Score: 74

Sorry for not reviewing more this week. Next week should be better.