Notre-Dame in Flammen

Between the report and the reconstruction, the movie by Jean-Jacques Annaud is excellent. The only extra-production thing that makes a stain is that we collect hundreds of millions to rebuild what has been destroyed and we can't find a hundred cents to give to the unfortunate. A crazy world.

French TOWERING INFERNO, but nearly fifty years later and involving Notre Dame instead of a gigantic tower building. As far as I know, that's the only and first French disaster film ever made; but maybe I am wrong. I have seen only forty thousand films in my life. It is truly a masterpiece, Jean Jacques Annaud lost nothing of his talent, his awesome skills, forty years after LA GUERRE DU FEU. It's fire war - GUERRE DU FEU - again.... It's as awesome as his first epic, back in 1981, which was about another topic of course. It is great, accurate, providing thousands of details about this disaster. Everything you wished to know about it, you have here. Except maybe the real reasons of the fire. Accidental? Maybe. Maybe. But never forget that president Macron was in a bad position in April 2019, bad political position, because of the Yellow Jackets "revolution" that spread all over France. And this tragedy over Notre Dame was the best decoy for him, to "help" people forgetting for a long while the Yellow Jackets wrath. That's my own opinion. An accident? Maybe. Maybe.

Based on the real 2019 Notre-Dame de Paris fire. A kind of Louis de Funes movie, but with firefighters, not gendarmes. Not very accurate, despite using some archive footage from the real events.

It shows the French as incompetent and out-of-reality people, lacking all interests about doing things properly. It intended to show the Paris Fire Brigade in a good light, as working hard heroes, but in fact it portrait them as slackers, a "fake it till you make it" command, more interested in being ultra religious, braving in a humoristic and ridiculous way.

A film comparable at most with hollywoodian disaster movies.

On the one hand, it's very interesting how this film is almost devoid of a personal history or development of the characters. Also there is are no real main roles at all. On the other hand, it's what's missing to make it entertaining. So we see a lot of rescue workers who don't really know what to do, a city population that ignores and hinders the rescue workers and an 800 years old cathedral that almost burns down completely.

Not so exciting, because apart from the tragedy of the destruction, nothing special happens. No special event shown or a known reason is told for this catastrophy that answers our only question: why this happened? ... like in millions of other fires where old buildings simply start burning for seemingly no reason. But is this enough for a entertaining flick? I think not. Not if it's not artfully staged and it isn't. Sometimes you even think you're watching a B-movie.

A real documentary would have been more exciting than an entertainment film without a real story that doesn't know what it's supposed to be.

Notre Dame Brûle is a crying indictment to the entire system (or lack thereof) that was supposed to protect and preserve from the risk of fire one of the most ancient and beautiful monuments of the world.

How is it possible that the several tons of very old wood that made the roof of the cathedral were not equipped with an extensive state of the art anti fire system? Had any of the cathedral's curators ever took a stroll across what was called "the forest"? Had the idea of what a sparkle could do in such environment ever crossed their mind?

How is it possible that none of the curators ever felt the need to design and put in place a pre-defined plan of intervention that would allow an instantaneous deployment of the fire brigades in case of fire emergency?

How is it possible that no one ever thought it might be a good idea to invest into equipping the cathedral with a modern, reliable, pervasive fire alarm system?

How is it possible that so many of the cathedral's infrastructures, like the pipes supposed to carry the water to the roof, were completely decrepit and unusable?

All the polemics surrounding the crisis management after the fire were simply sterile: one hour after the roof caught fire, the cathedral was doomed, the fire was out of control. All was decided in those 60 minutes when all the outdated, failing systems in place did nothing to trigger a prompt response.

This is no hindsight: the hypothesis of a fire was (should have been) a very real one; but none of those in charge acted upon it.

If Notre Dame is still standing, despite the ineptness of its curators, it is thanks to the superior bravery of a bunch of fire brigades officers who put their lives at risk to go in and extinguish the fire in the left tower.

This incident however will remain a forever stain on France's credibility in its ability to protect its artistic patrimony.