Setting the Scene
You constantly hear a fly buzzing around you. A wildfire slowly creeps towards the vacation home you’re staying at. The fire department announces that the wildfires are approaching: please don’t start a campfire, smoke, or otherwise engage in behaviour that is dangerous around wildfires. Your car breaks down and the repair shops are closed: you’ll be fleeing the fire on foot. Sounds unsettling, perhaps frightening, doesn’t it? These are the conditions that the main characters in Petzold’s Afire find themselves in when they visit a family-owned vacation home. These are the same conditions that don’t seem to bother Leon, one of the main characters, at all.
Felix and Leon head to this vacation home by the water—passed down from Felix’s relatives who occupied the home during the GDR—with one goal in mind: working on their artistic endeavors. Leon aims to finish writing his book, and Felix aims to finish his photography portfolio. To their surprise, they will be sharing the home with Devid and Nadja: two carefree strangers who keep Felix and Leon up at night with their passionate sex. As it turns out, Felix and Leon engage in their artistic endeavors quite differently: Felix falls in love with Devid, and Leon becomes an insufferable friend who can think of nothing better to do than talk about the fact that he needs to write all the time. He rejects beach outings, rudely questions Devid’s occupation as a lifeguard by suggesting that it isn’t enough, and disregards Nadja’s kindness because she is a lowly ice cream scooper who, therefore, cannot understand the difficult task he has ahead of him.
The Environment as a Savior
The film’s premise is simple: these four young individuals enjoy a vacation at a beachside home while wildfires destroy the towns around them, slowly creeping towards the forest around the home. The characters are young and appropriately carefree: the wildfires don’t cause any urgency, certainly not for Leon. Instead, nature becomes a sanctuary for him. In fact, it saves him in several ways. First, the car that he and Felix use to travel to their home breaks down on the way. Stranded, they decide to take a shortcut through the forest, which saves them a great deal of time. Then, the sound of Nadja and Devid sleeping together keeps Leon up at night: he sleeps outside in an attempt to get some peace and quiet. It goes without saying that the backyard of this home is meant to inspire him—to bring him peace and clarity. And, of course, he writes on paper: a product of the trees around him. The nature around Leon quite literally affords him his job. In fact, he shares at the start of the movie that this space should give him peace and quiet to complete his writing.
Ironically, this very same nature is on fire: a product of climate change. What is currently a peaceful space will soon become destructive. But Leon couldn’t be bothered. He is so consumed in his writing that the planes extinguishing the fire do not bother him; likewise, the firefighters’ announcement does not bother him even when he risks losing everything around him. Nature, in this way, appears as both sanctuary and threat. He is tasked with learning to deal with nature’s two opposing faces, his strategy being to ignore the threat altogether. That is, until we realize that nature is a threat primarily because humans have developed it to be: it’s a false duality. Leon’s apathy in the face of impending disaster and his desire for nature as a backdrop for personal growth, therefore, suggest that Afire critiques both environmental inaction and the solipsism that enables it. His focus on his writing success enables him to believe that the wildfires are not an urgent matter: he acts as though (without actually thinking about it) no one can label him as not doing enough for the environment because he shouldn’t be focusing on that right now. Instead, he should focus on his writing, thereby absolving himself of any environmentally related, normatively dictated duties—duties that become normative in nature insofar as one is part of a collective within a collectively shared space. It’s not that, without a job, one should therefore address the environment; it’s just that with a job, one should not be required to address it. As we will see, however, this critique that Afire offers falls short for several reasons.
Ultimately, the destruction of nature gives Leon a source of income: his writing. He spends the majority of the film appearing as a failing author. His writing bores Nadja and his publisher. Nadja rejects his writing, sharing that it’s unpalatable and he knows it. Indeed, that is the extent of her critique. Unsurprisingly, Leon does not listen to Nadja’s feedback because she is just someone who scoops ice cream for a living; she couldn’t understand his complex and creative job—one that becomes not just a job, but an identity. He wants her to read his manuscript, knowing her occupation, yet does not want her feedback unless it’s approval. This reveals a crucial aspect of his character: he is dedicated to his writing, but not enough to set aside his ego. This becomes his most annoying trait, and perhaps the one that prevents the film from successfully presenting a critique of humans and their relationship to climate change. He learns only later that Nadja is actually working on her dissertation in literary studies: that, according to him, this would have stopped him from sharing his manuscript with her further supports his undeniable ego. That nothing can satisfy him is a perfect representation of his relationship with the environment: it’s not like he can do anything to stop the wildfires, just like no one can help him with his writing anyway. He’s doomed, or so he thinks, and that absolves him of guilt around his inaction. Indeed, his publisher shares Nadja’s feelings, suggesting that Leon should start over. The manuscript cannot be saved. So what acceptable and successful story does he ultimately write? One about the devastation caused by the wildfires.
Is to Confront Climate Change to Confront Oneself?
Things take a turn when the wildfires eventually do reach the forest directly next to the vacation home, despite their belief that it wouldn’t. The four friends suddenly see ash falling after enjoying a dinner together. Simultaneously, the publisher begins choking. Nadja rushes him to the hospital. Felix and Devid (a couple by now) use a tractor to tow the car, and Leon runs to the hospital on foot. On the way, he sees the fire creeping over the edge towards them and firetrucks passing him. Still, he appears unfazed. The moment at the hospital is short-lived: the publisher, who we later learn has cancer, has another appointment to attend; Nadja appears in distress, saddened by the publisher’s condition; and Leon becomes jealous, still unable to put his ego aside. In fact, he doesn’t even notice that his publisher has cancer or is in the cancer unit because he is too entrenched in his failing novel. Leon remains entangled in petty anxieties, his world narrowed by ego and ambition; he reverts to inward-focused jealousy, a pattern that is becoming increasingly bothersome. In that moment, Nadja and his publisher’s closeness, as well as their efforts to comfort Leon, feel like an attempt to team up against him rather than people comforting each other in a moment of medical stress. The fire that creeps over the forest edge mirrors his emotional regression. Relentless and inescapable. He doesn’t confront his mortality; he retreats into self-obsession fueled by the perceived pity: to fail as an author becomes adjacent to death. His mortality is tied to his job success rather than his physical being. Climate change becomes an internal crisis that reveals internal failings.
Perhaps this suggests that confronting climate change is also a matter of confronting oneself. I say perhaps because this falls flat at the end of the film: Leon has an easy out by publishing a story about the catastrophe. What should be a vehicle that exposes the human ego becomes the very same thing that boosts the human ego. To my mind, therefore, whatever critique the film may have regarding climate change and aging disappears, unless it is to say that the younger, ambitious generations who always feel the need to work to survive have no chance at addressing climate change if that survival instinct remains. Climate change, as long as it remains an internal crisis, will remain difficult to tackle: the film suggests that this is too difficult a problem to address.
We finally get a full shot of the fires with thirteen minutes of the film remaining. Now, Leon feels concerned about the fires: this concern appears only when the devastation becomes directly personal and irreversible—when it becomes immediate. He and Nadja return to the vacation house, and he begins to tell her that, to no one’s surprise, he was in love with her from the moment he saw her. As viewers, it’s irritating and out of place: in this moment of life and death, he can think of nothing better than to make the moment about him once again. It’s not that he wants to tell her he loves her before the fire envelops them: his tone suggests that he merely wants to share this information and resolve their interpersonal struggles. Nadja appears as though she couldn’t care less. As he talks at her, however, the police approach the property and tell Nadja that Felix and Devid have passed away in the fires. It’s outrageous: Leon gets to survive while the fire consumes those attempting to do some good. This, alone, suggests that he somehow ‘won’, weakening the film’s critique of how an individual’s ego can get in the way of doing any ‘real work’ to prevent climate change from progressing.
Then, a sudden cut, and a disembodied narrator narrates what happened. As it turns out, this is Leon’s new writing. This is the writing that brings him the success I previously alluded to. It isn’t the story he wrote while at the house, but a story about the destruction of the home and his friends. The narrator’s reading of the story is how we find out what happened: Felix and Devid tragically pass away as they attempted to tow the vehicle that would bring everyone to safety. Leon even includes the photographs that Felix took for his own creative project. This is his triumph: it took the destruction of nature that he miraculously survived, and couldn’t care less about in the moment, for him to be inspired. To my mind, the cost of inspiration is high—too high. It is almost as if the film endorses this cost: with ‘some’ destruction, one can make a masterpiece. That is, after all, not only what Leon does but what the film itself does: it profits off of the human ego and climate change to provide us with a piece of entertainment about an artist in distress who, without knowing it, falls in love with the woman who critiques his writing. The disembodied narration of the final story supports this: it is distanced, polished, detached. It mirrors Leon’s emotional distance from the costs that inspired it. Aesthetizing and monetizing tragedy is his personal triumph. I suggest that the film straddles the line between condemnation and complicity. It is a part of the system it yearns to critique. To my mind, the film is not quite self-aware enough to end up as the “good guy” — to triumph on the side of condemnation and not complicity. As we will soon discuss, the final shot of Nadja’s smile and Leon’s illegible stare leaves a sour aftertaste.
