Lo que arde

Its familiar slow cinema/rural drama aesthetic without adding something new curb Fire Will Come to be more than just... okay. Still a decent watching with some profound message tho.

The title O Que Arde means "what burns," which has been translated as "The Fire will Come" with some change of meaning. Yes, there is a plot but it could be told in a couple of lines and is not important after all. What we watch in this movie is life in a small town in Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain. The language is mostly Galician with a few Spanish interpolations. Actors are local people, play themselves with their own names and go about their everyday chores apparently oblivious to the camera. The are glimpses of Galicia's reality such as migration of young people to the cities, excessive logging of forests, dedicated firemen with woefully few resources, a villager trying to improve a ruined dwelling into a casa rural (rural house) fit for prospective tourists. The climate is mild and rainy but the summers are dry, facilitating forest fires that are sometimes the result of arson. Both the melancholic winter landscapes and the summer fires are strikingly put on screen.

Director and scriptwriter Oliver Laxe, scriptwriter Santiago Fillol and cinematographer Mauro Herce have joined forces to produce a masterpiece where the boundary between living and acting is blurry and where we find ourselves in the middle of the action for the duration of the movie. An exceptional work that makes us reflect on the nature of cinema.

This film won the Golden Alexander at Thessalonki International Film Festival and I had the chance to watch it there. It looked great, so why not give it a shot?

After watching it my thoughts are mixed. Yes, if you are a cinematography freak, you will adore this one. The shots are really natural and provoke a sense of awe for the pure and unprocessed beauty of nature and it is a great portrayl of the nver-ending love-hate realtionship between humanity and nature and how this two great forces will always collide and crush onto one another. We depend on nature and nature depends on us. I really loved some of the images and I have to say that this film is a great example of tone consistency, even if the tone of the film is not for everyone. I don't have a problem with slow films, because there's usually something intriguing to watch in those like, a character study or in this case a variety of shots of the nature. A lto of films have a tendency to loose their tone and to become meaningless and messy but this one never forgets its goal and that's why it got my interest. That and the fact that around that time I was really hyped up for a reason and even if I tried to sleep, it would a lot of effort. The sound and images serve for a visual feast of gorgeous shots of trees, lakes, animals and people gazing at their greatness and scale.

As for the characters, well the main character was really interesting and by the end of the film his story feels complete yet sad and tragic and I felt really bad for him. His character serves as a storng remind that the past will always haunt us and will affect the present. the way the society and our realtives treat us and our view of life. It is a true struggle to prove to others that things have changed and you actually end up being followed by your wrongs.But people that really love you, also forgive you and care for you and accept you. It is a great concept for a film and it was pretty well done.

The thing about the film is that it felt kind of all over the place and I assure you that evne if I watched 2 months ago, I remember really little form the film. Yes, everything looked great and there was a sense of interest and empathy for the main character, but the film lacked a drama, a tension, a sense of events taking place. It feels like the first 1 hour we view beautiful shots and then the last act is the plot.And the parts were characters interact feel great. I loved the scene where the main acotr talks to a woman and Leonard Cohen's mesmerizing "Suzanne". The song fits so much to the scene and I got a sense of authentic immesuarble beauty and warmness in my heart from this scene, even it was just about two characters driving will this song plays. The images are perfrect, the song is beautful and I loved how hte scene feels like a breath of freshn air compared to the more moody dark tone of the film. I guess if you realllyy get into the film's atmosphere and themes you will love it. It is defenately a gorgeous experience, but if it had a more present structure and we got5 to meet the characters more and observe hteir conversaitons, I would probably have apprecieted the story and characters more. It is powerful and expressive ,though, but it lacks a clarity and order which would help me to feel it more.

6 or 7 not sure

I've heard somewhere than only a local story can be truly universal, well, this is absolutely rooted in Galicia and it's as complete a portrait as can be, from rain to sun, beauty, calmness, wisdom, loneliness and everything in between, every movement has a true resonance. It subtly ranks the region's alleged common enemies with a deep understanding: tourism, eucalyptus, fire and, ultimately, people.

To someone knowing the region this might even be redundant but there's more to it than the hipnotic flow of nature and things. It's an excellent film.

It's a slow moving movie from beginning to end. And it doesn't have much of an ending.