Afire (Christian Petzold, 2023) (Patreon)

As many have remarked already, this is Petzold's most Rohmerian film. A seaside getaway becomes an interpersonal proving ground for a self-important intellectual (Thomas Schubert) buckling under the pressure to produce a second novel as successful and acclaimed as his first. Afire stages this crisis as one of solipsism, as the novelist, Leon, repeatedly forgoes social interaction in order to pretend to work on his manuscript. His pompous reply when asked to go for a swim -- "my work won't allow it" -- becomes a bit of a running joke, and not just because the "work" isn't getting done. (A repeated shot of Leon bouncing a tennis ball off the roof of the summer house while not writing is a direct quotation of The Shining and Jack Torrence's "all work and no play" philosophy.) We learn that the pomposity with which Leon regards his task is matched only by the shittiness of said manuscript, "Club Sandwich."

Leon is an insufferable prick, and in its own unassuming way Afire is something of a referendum on the notion that artists have special license to be horrible people. As we learn, more is at stake than just appropriate manners. Leon is literally incapable of seeing the forest (fire) for the trees. Petzold is fairly explicit in his diagnosis of Leon as someone whose work is bad precisely because he is so blind to everything and everyone around him. (To cite another story about the downfall of a pretentious writer, we can recall Charlie confronting Barton Fink: You don't listen!)

The thin boundaries between inside and outside are a fairly obvious trope in Afire, and might in fact be too obvious if Petzold weren't going for laughs of bitter recognition. From Leon's irritation with Nadja (Paula Beer) loudly getting railed in the next bedroom, to Felix (Langston Uibel) telling Leon he can do his writing under the pergola, every situation that prevents Leon from shutting out the outer world makes him that much more bitter. The encroaching forest fires reflect Leon's inability to "get away from it all" writ large. A smug bourgeois, he sees the country as a designated space for contemplation, and discovers too late that nature has its own imperatives and is being destroyed by human inattention.

Certain reversals are predictable, I suppose, but Petzold conducts them well, situating Leon in the Larry David role. Nadja isn't just an ice cream vendor, and Leon's dismissal of her opinion only goes to show how his entire attitude is one of self-sabotage. After all, he is attracted to Nadja, but never thinks to ask her about herself or her past. The ultimate fate of Felix and Devid (Enno Trebs) may be taking things a bit far -- although this is a charred black comedy. And it does demonstrate the toll taken when Leon's self-regard becomes a generalized ethos. If the conclusion hints at redemption for Leon, it can also be seen as exchanging one pathological archetype for another, life's brutal epiphanies becoming source material. Trauma, like fossil fuel, is a non-renewable resource.