Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Instability hovers on several fronts – environmental, political, economic – and German filmmaker Christian Petzold manifests his concern about it with remarkable astuteness. For the haunting Transit (2018), he filmed characters with new-fangled accessories in black-and-white as they sought escape from a port in a nameless fascist state, seamlessly casting the shadow of Second World War trauma over the present day. In his new film Afire, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, he zeroes in on narcissism in a time that demands community.
Leon, portrayed with unerring nuance by Thomas Schubert, is a young writer desperately keen on chasing his promising first novel with a stellar sophomore effort, inanely titled Club Sandwich. He suspects it is dreck but hopes his publisher will say otherwise at a meeting they’ve scheduled on Germany’s Baltic coast, where Leon is on a retreat with his friend Felix, a photography student, at his parents’ cottage. Visible wildfires are simmering in the coastal forest, but fortuitous winds are assumed to keep them at bay. Staying there unexpectedly are Nadja (Paula Beer, rustically winsome), a boardwalk ice cream vendor, and Devid, a lifeguard, whose audible sex sets Leon on edge because he is smitten with her. A temperamental jackass essentially by design, Leon is fatuously rude and practically useless, stepping up only when Devid steps aside. But after Nadja reads his manuscript and tells him it’s lousy, he lashes out at the “ice cream girl” with petulant self-pity. Sadly, the publisher confirms her take. At an impromptu dinner, Nadja charms the older man with erudite musings about Heine and reveals that she is a gifted literary scholar on hiatus. Duped and alone among grown-ups, a Costanzan Leon hits bottom.
Up to that point, the story tracks as biting satire, with Leon, a coddled and pathetically brittle solipsist, the deserving butt of the joke. Then the fires overtake personal trifles – Rick’s “hill of beans” speech at the airport in Casablanca comes obliquely to mind, as does the Hemingway-esque notion of the artist as a willing participant in history – challenging Leon to help someone other than himself. Tragedy both emergent and mundane looms, life no longer seems to be all about him, and the world to which he is accustomed looks frighteningly perishable. Petzold’s 2012 film Barbara featured a twentieth-century character whom political circumstances – the Cold War – forced to decide between self-interest and compassion. Now some of the direst threats, such as climate change, are harder to trace to particular culprits or conflicts, present in the ether as it were. Afire illuminates this existential phenomenon without skimping on the human peculiarity that furnishes a story with texture and believability. It is a contemporary fable constructed with penetrating intelligence, a sense of humor, a full heart, and suitable dread.
Afire, written and directed by Christian Petzold. Distributed by The Match Factory GmbH and Piffl Medien, 2023.
About the author: Jonathan Stevenson is a New York-based policy analyst, writer, and editor, contributing to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Politico, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
