Fire of Love sounds like a terrible Lifetime Movie about a firefighter who is also a pyromaniac. What it actually is, is a sweet documentary about two influential but forgotten people. Volcanologists studying volcanoes really only works as a doc if there’s footage of them while in action. Thankfully, Katia and Maurice Krafft always had the cameras rolling.
I’ll save you the volcano puns. Katia and Maurice Krafft both studied scientific pursuits at the University of Strasbourg. After meeting on a park bench at uni, the pair quickly fell in love. Their idea of a romantic sojourn was to see Mount Stromboli off the coast of Italy, and its endless volcanic eruptions. Finding a calling, the pair then spent the rest of their lives studying everything about volcanoes, until their tragic death at Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991.
Sara Dosa had thousands of hours of footage leftover from the Kraffts to put together this documentary, giving the documentarian all sorts of avenues to choose from when putting the couple’s story together. The easy lay ups are the incredible footage the couple shot REALLY close to several volcanic eruptions. Dosa divides the volcanic footage into two digestible types the audience could understand: red vs. grey. Early boldness was discovered by the pair on the red volcanoes. Because they’re experts, the Kraffts knew that these eruptions look super scary but in reality they’re the safer of the two types. As such, their thirst for pushing the boundaries grows and grows the more they learn, making the footage they capture more and more incredible with each new eruption they film. Eventually, they realize that the grey volcanoes cause more catastrophic damage, and Katia and Maurice switch their attention to those volcanoes. Perils come frequently and unexpectedly with these behemoths, like a harrowing sulfuric acid lake experience that almost kills one of them. That footage amps up the tension (Dosa forewarned the audience, Mt. Unzen is a grey volcano, how the Kraffts perished) but constantly reminds the audience at the same time that this life path was always their choice.
The rest of Fire of Love’s footage is spent showing the “love” section. No, not sex scenes: get your head out of the gutter! There’s a playful joy between the two of them, like when Maurice hurls a volcanic rock at Katia’s covered head and watches her struggle to stand up. Despite those guffaws, there’s a mutual respect between Katia, Maurice, and the volcano, as the volcanologists cautiously push boundaries to learn more about their chosen subject of research. The Kraffts exuberance at their studies lead to all sorts of publications in many media. We see them at book readings and on TV: being married volcanologists certainly gave them some celebrity in the intellectual world. That ever growing knowledge also extends out to love for their fellow man. The couple’s inevitably saw some of the deaths of friends and unfortunate bystanders caught in a volcano’s destruction; their empathy for those lives lost lead them to become experts in evacuation strategies for various governments dealing with an active volcano.
I keep wanting to write “Vulcanologist” to describe Maurice and Katia Krafft’s expertise. Unfortunately they did not study Spock. And even though they did not live long, they did prosper, living their most fulfilling lives, beginning to end. What more could you want?