All some people want during the dog days of summer is to sit agog before a mile-high screen, hypnotized by pyrotechnic special effects, puerile jokes, and perhaps the warm comfort of an aging movie star. But some of us prefer cinema to be a refuge, letting the season’s films wash over us and leave imperceptible, indelible imprints in their wake.
A bit of counterprogramming to force-fed blockbuster entertainment is German director Christian Petzold’s new feature, Afire, winner of the Silver Bear grand-jury prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Leon and Felix (Thomas Schubert and Langston Uibel) are two friends spending the summer at a house on Germany’s Baltic coast. But author Leon’s plans for a productive stay—for him to finish his second manuscript and for Felix to complete a portfolio to apply to art school—are derailed when they discover they must share the space with the irresistibly charming Nadja (Petzold’s muse Paula Beer, star of the director’s last two films, 2018’s Transit and 2020’s Undine).
In short order and in this bucolic setting, Leon proves to be an irritable jerk: self-absorbed, painfully insecure, perpetually annoyed, snobbish, and at times reflexively cruel. He rejects gentle Felix’s frequent entreaties to join him swimming in the sea, saying he must work (only to end up procrastinating and snooping around Nadja’s room) and reminding his friend he should be doing the same.
But as Felix soon points out, taking care of the minutiae of life is work too: fixing a roof, cooking, cleaning. All go into the ever-churning internal percolator that, for artists, will eventually spark inspiration for creative output. Work is what happens when an artist is trying to work (a theme likewise explored in Kelly Reichardt’s superb Showing Up this year). And creative work is not something you must cloister yourself away to do; indeed you must open yourself to the world instead.
It may sound like an awful lot of talk about work, especially for a summer film. But Afire is also Petzold at his funniest, with plenty of long, wine-soaked meals al fresco, furtive romances, and one beautiful poem recited in full from memory. And as Leon confronts—and instigates—various interpersonal conflicts, a much larger and very real threat simmers in the background: the approaching titular calamity, which the characters convince themselves is far enough away to not be of concern, despite the ominous orange nighttime sky.
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