Fire of Love ★★★
(PG) 93 minutes

Katia and Maurice Krafft were French volcanologists. They spent 20 years getting closer than anyone ever had to volcanoes around the world, to film and photograph their eruptions. They died the same way that many of their colleagues have, from a random explosion while working.

American documentary maker Sara Dosa gained access to their extensive archives. She begins with their deaths in 1991 on the slopes of a Japanese volcano. With that tension out of the way, she recounts their love story, with a poetic, somewhat romantic narration delivered by Miranda July. The droning narration nearly killed the film for me but others might like it.

The images are spectacular, sublime, astonishing, terrifying and they raise meaty questions. The Kraffts were “freelance”, not backed by a university or government. They lived on the books and films they made, so the images they collected had to be dramatic. At one point, seated at his Steenbeck editing a film, Maurice quips that he is not a filmmaker, but a wandering volcanologist who makes films in order to be able to wander.

It is hard to deny that the act of filming encouraged them to take more risks, although Maurice probably would have done so anyway. He often took appalling chances. In one scene shot in Indonesia, he and another scientist row a cheap rubber boat out onto a lake that’s largely sulphuric acid. Katia, trained in chemistry, refuses to join them. When they drop a steel cable over the side to get samples, the acid chews through the cable.

Katia and Maurice were from Alsace. Their partnership appears to have been built on a mutual fascination for the power of the earth’s most violent forces, and a great respect for each other’s talents and daring. It’s compelling viewing, but I would have liked more analysis of the reasons for their risk-taking. The narration tends towards the mystical and florid, with observations about the earth’s beating heart and lava flowing like blood.

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After they died, Werner Herzog made a film paying tribute to the Kraffts, using some of the same footage. Fire of Love has a lot more footage, but it’s determined to fashion a love story. That’s fair enough, just not the whole enchilada. The Kraffts were a conundrum. They were almost certain that the work would kill them. They were equally sure that it was important to convince governments to take their predictions seriously. There is little detail here on the worth of their work as science. Was it necessary to go so close for the work, or to make the money that allowed them to continue? Did that work produce important research or simply unparalleled images for others to study? Many questions go unanswered, even if the images are unforgettable.

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