Mark Reviews Movies: FIRE WILL COME

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 29, 2020

Not much happens in Fire Will Come, co-writer/director Oliver Laxe's observational drama about a man trying to move on from his past. The man returns home. He helps his elderly mother on the family farm. He mostly avoids other people, and everything makes it seem as if life will just continue this way for the foreseeable future.

There's something routine, calming, and quietly optimistic about this low-key tale (co-written by Santiago Fillol), set near a small town in the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. We only learn what we need to know about this place and the story's characters.

Amador (Amador Arias, a non-professional actor whose demeanor and face express volumes about the character's unspoken depth, experience, and history) arrives home on a bus, two years after he was sentenced to prison for arson. It resulted in a fire in the mountains that nearly burnt down the nearby village ("Poor bastard" is all the prison officials can muster).

Some things have changed, such as Amador's now-estranged friend Inazio (Inazio Abrao) refurbishing a dilapidated house, hoping to appeal to tourists, and the recent arrival of Elena (Elena Fernández), the town's veterinarian,. Most things haven't changed at all. As she did before and while her son was in prison, Amador's mother Benedicta (Benedicta Sánchez) still works on the farm, handling cattle and opening a heavy gate as if age has no effect on her. Amador joins in the work, meanwhile noting the destruction of forests wrought by the logging industry.

Laxe focuses on the relative peace of this new life, as Amador and Benedicta fall back into the comfort of their relationship, the farmer and the veterinarian strike up a quick bond, and the ex-convict avoids the few disapproving stares and rumors surrounding his return. There's tension, of course, in those looks and whispers and jokes, as well as in Amador's own loaded gazes upon patches of ripped-up forest. With the certainty of something akin to fate, it all comes to a head when another fire breaks out in the area.

Fire Will Come offers no answers about the cause of the inferno, but it does show the consequences (mostly through an extended sequence of firefighters and locals trying to contain the spreading blaze). There's a despondent truth to this: Whether or not Amador started the fire and as hard as he tries, there is no escaping the past.

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