Twisting cables of molten rock; billowing, doughy crusts; gaping mouths revealing churning guts of lava in an orange so vivid you can practically hear it. The remarkable footage accumulated by the French celebrity volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft captures the multiple, unpredictable personalities of the volcanoes they studied. But the way this lyrical documentary, operating in the intersection between science and poetry, tells it, the danger of the eruptions was part of the attraction. The closer Katia and Maurice got to the boiling earth, the more their curiosity grew stronger than their fear.
The film, as the over-ornate narration by Miranda July stresses, is a love story. But the romance goes three ways: between the gamine geochemist Katia, the ursine, showboating geologist Maurice and the volcanoes that united them. The film’s approach skirts around the actual science of the Kraffts’ work, but it does explore the psychology of a shared passion, of a couple who melted their boots together on smoking lava flows and danced by the craters in a confetti of volcanic bombs.
