The ongoing insecurities of masculinity are brought to the forefront in Christian Petzold’s newest film, Afire. The film, recent winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, brings four young people together, trapped by ever-growing forest fires.
★★★✰✰
Leon (Thomas Schubert), a writer, and his friend Felix (Langston Uibel), a photographer, travel to Felix’s holiday home on the Baltic coast to get some much-needed work done. Things start to go wrong immediately when their car breaks down en route, forcing them to walk several kilometres to the house. There they are surprised to find another occupant, Nadja (Paula Beer), the niece of Felix’s mother’s colleague. Further distractions arrive for Leon when he meets Nadja’s lifeguard boyfriend Devid (Enno Trebbs), all while he is expecting an imminent visit from editor Helmut (Matthias Brandt).
Afire is deceptively simple with its script. It is formulaic at times, and is often unsure what genre it wants to be. It’s a romantic comedy, a tragicomedy, and tries to have elements of a thriller as forest fires draw closer. However, the forest fires don’t pose too much of a threat until the very end of the film, making the title, and its original German version Roter Himmel (Red Sky) feel a little out of place. For the majority of the film, the only drama and conflict comes from Leon and the insecurities he has around his work.
Schubert portrays these insecurities subtly. Leon appears arrogantly confident, dismissive of Felix’s simple photography project and Nadja’s seasonal summer job selling ice cream. However he is not completely dismissive of the others’ work. Asa procrastinator, he appears jealous of how easily Felix’s photos come together. When Nadja and Helmut both read his latest novel, Club Sandwich, it becomes clear why he is uncertain of himself: it’s not a good book, and he knows it.
It makes a good change to many other films that cover the insecurities of artists. Despite his attempts to separate himself from the rest of the group, wearing black to the beach as the others swim and sleeping on the outside patio, Leon is not an unrecognised genius. It’s a little on the nose, but it works, showing the struggles of a working artist building his career.
Leon’s lightbulb moment comes too late in the narrative, and feels like a rushed attempt to quickly tie up the slow-paced nature of the film thus far. Waiting for any effect from the fires also feels like a waiting game, and there may have been a better emotional payoff if the ensemble started to feel the pressure from the fire earlier on.
To go alongside the simple script, Petzold’s direction and cinematography is also unassuming. It’s not flashy and is deliberately rough at some times, much like Leon’s personality and writing. Accompanied by the repetitive use of the song ‘in my mind’ by Austrian band Wallners, Petzold places the audience into Leon’s shoes: he’s stuck, he can’t escape the mediocracy cycle and give in to the desires that would make his work better.
The supporting characters, particularly Nadja and Helmut, serve to further isolate Leon. There’s a sweet moment between Nadja and Helmut where they recite a poem together and form an instant connection, something Leon is extremely jealous and frustrated at. Much like the forest fire, his environment grows smaller and smaller.
The Verdict
It’s not hard to see why Afire won the Silver Bear, but it won’t have been people’s first choice either. The easy-going performances, supported by the deceptively simple script and intermittently cut with dry German humour, make it a crowd-pleaser, and its fresh take on the struggling male artist leaves much room for discussion post viewing. That being said, if the aforementioned red sky had been introduced a lot earlier, the stakes for the quartet would have been higher, and made viewing much more interesting.
Words by Sarah Storer
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