O que arde

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.

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

This was a dreary effort posturing itself as some sort of artistic work but in reality it has little substance and most people will just find it a bit boring.

Coupled with that, there is no resolving of the main characters guilt or not and leaves it up tot he viewer to work it out but in this case it just falls a bit flat.

The story of Amador, who returns to his village in Galicia, after 2 years imprisoned by arson. This film is 80% cinematography, filmed in a beautiful 16mm, with long shots of the mountains, village houses, animals, and impressive images of a fire (the team is to be congratulated for the realism of it). The narrative has a slow pace, almost no development from the first act until the end, but I believe that that was the goal of Oliver Laxe, to portray the calmness and loneliness of country life. The short and cold dialogues are the reflexion of a community that is not given to affections, but always united in tragedy.

A wonderful poignant movie with a loud and clear message that is so relevant in today's age. It portrays the simple but traumatic life of Amador and his mother. Cinematography is just breathtaking ...