"Afire" - Film Review
Afire, the new film by Christian Petzold, questions the life of an artist and the trials and thrills that come with a creative career. Leon (Thomas Schubert) is a writer who has come with his friend Felix (Langston Uibel), a photographer, to a small holiday house on the Baltic Sea. Felix’s mother, who owns the house, has rented it to a young woman named Nadja (Paula Beer), another writer. She has been sleeping with Devid (Enno Trebs), a lifeguard at the nearby beach. Tensions are already high in the shared house, but when a wildfire isolates the foursome from the seaside town, their already intense emotions elevate to another level entirely.
Leon is a stereotypical sort of writer. He wears all black and long sleeves, even in the stifling summer weather. He hides behind his laptop and the work he has to do, even though he is the only one who is convinced of its greatness. Leon is, for lack of a better word, an asshole. He looks down upon Felix’s photography and the smallest of inconveniences set him off. He believes that what Leon is doing is what matters, and that everyone else simply exists in his orbit. When some of his book is finally read aloud, all the assumptions prove true: in the brief excerpt we hear, the writing is pretentious yet plain, and manages to reference a character’s cleavage in what maybe amounts to three paragraphs. He’s not the most compelling of main characters, but he gets the majority of the screen time.
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All throughout Afire is the sound of a buzzing insect, the kind that likes to hover near your ear on a warm summer night. Its incessant hum can be maddening, and no matter how many times you swat it away, it somehow always comes back. It’s the perfect thematic element to Afire. This buzz is a stand-in for so many emotions and plot points for these characters. To Devid, Felix, and Nadja, the buzz is just a fact of life that they accept. They’re far more easygoing than Leon and accept that the buzz is what they must put up with in order to have the freedom of summer. For Leon, it’s a reminder that nothing is going his way, a never-ceasing reminder of his own self-doubts. A manifestation of all of the annoyances around him. It’s something he can’t get past, nor does he want to get past it. As much as he hates these barriers, he loves having something to complain about.
The interesting crux of the film is the group’s isolation, but it doesn’t come into play until the final 20 minutes. This seems to be a choice that was inspired by the pandemic quarantines we all lived through in the spring of 2020. The forced companionship caused by a force greater than ourselves. There’s inherent tension and possibility in that set-up, and it’s the sort of simmer to an overflowing boil that makes for fantastic drama. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t get the opportunity to revel in its slow-burn possibilities because of its pacing. Too much time is spent on a sulking Leon while everyone has complete mobility. When the threat of the fires finally confines them, it’s too late. All the air has been let out of the balloon. Even then, the group isn’t completely confined to the house, and that throws the film’s entire purpose into question.
“Are you aware of anything?” Nadja asks Leon, utterly exasperated. It’s one thing to be oblivious and miss things that are happening right in front of you. To misunderstand or misread your surroundings. It’s another to witness what’s going on and choose to believe that everyone is actively working against you. Leon has placed himself firmly at the center of the universe and sees other people’s trauma only as fodder for his next book. Afire doesn’t challenge Leon or force him to look outside himself, which results in the film ending emotionally where it began. It lacks the burning sense of humanity that is arguably the most essential part of art.
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