Fire Will Come

Shots of lush green­ery, ver­dant hill­sides and the awe-strik­ing spec­ta­cle of untram­melled, over­grown farm­land blan­ket­ing the rolling hill­sides take up the first hour of Spaniard Oliv­er Laxe’s hushed third fea­ture, Fire Will Come.

Lat­er, the promise of the title is deliv­ered and all those rich greens are super­seded by reds, oranges and ochres as a ter­rif­ic blaze tears across the land­scape of rur­al Gali­cia. Fol­low­ing a short pro­logue in which a row of tow­er­ing euca­lyp­tus trees are felled by a dig­ger, we are intro­duced to soft­ly spo­ken pyro­ma­ni­ac Amador (Amador Arias) as he departs from a spell in Chokey to return to the fam­i­ly nest. This com­pris­es of his elder­ly, eter­nal­ly-for­giv­ing moth­er, and some mis­be­hav­ing cows.

In the moment, Laxe’s film comes across as a tran­quil doc-fic­tion hybrid which cap­tures those eking out a hum­ble exis­tence on the out­er mar­gins while sto­ical­ly work­ing through the lone­li­ness and phys­i­cal rep­e­ti­tion that come with the lifestyle. In ret­ro­spect, it’s more of a coiled study of crim­i­nal psy­chol­o­gy which pos­es the ques­tion of whether reha­bil­i­ta­tion is pos­si­ble when a sub­ject is placed back in exact­ly the same sit­u­a­tion that caused them to go off the rails in the first place.

The fire, which rages across the plains, tak­ing no pris­on­ers in its wan­ton destruc­tion, is sym­bol­ic of crime’s far-reach­ing and unpre­dictable con­se­quences. What lit­tle dia­logue is spo­ken between moth­er and son avoids any attempt to con­vene with past trou­bles, though the nos­tal­gic mus­ings about their chang­ing rela­tion­ship with the land­scape help to main­tain the illu­sion of sanity.

When it comes to reprisals and pun­ish­ment for the fire, Laxe opts for a more open-end­ed, reflec­tive cli­max, sug­gest­ing that, what­ev­er he choos­es to do with his life, Amador will always be taint­ed in the eyes of his neighbours.

Fire Will Come is avail­able on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma from 20 March.