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How California's worst fire season — so far — became a writer's most powerful metaphor
On the Shelf
The Last Fire Season
By Manjula Martin
Pantheon: 352 pages, $29
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By common measures, Manjula Martin is not a hopeful person. “In the current discussion of climate change,” she said, “‘hope’ is often used as a shorthand for returning to normal, otherwise known as business as usual.”
The sentiment pervades the writer’s new memoir, “The Last Fire Season,” but it prompts an important question, which I brought up during a video chat with Martin in late December: Why would people who feel hopeless about climate change still be motivated to do anything about it?
“I don’t actually believe there’s no hope for continued human existence, but if that’s true, then it’s even more important that we take care of each other and respect the land,” Martin says. A former editor of Zoetrope magazine, she co-wrote the 2019 horticultural guide “Fruit Trees for Every Garden” — hardly the product of a fatalist. She turns the question around: “That process of learning to give and take real care is actually the best chance we have of constructing real hope.”
But then she adds, “If mutual care isn’t working for you either, maybe try anger?”
This interplay of care and anger is partly what makes “The Last Fire Season” riveting. It is both a chronicle and a handbook of the struggle to fight the distortion of grief into despair.
The fire season of the title took place in 2020, a year of catastrophes for Martin, California and the world. COVID-19 filled hospitals and morgues and led to widespread isolation, U.S. democracy was challenged as never before and 58,258 forest fires nationwide burned more than 10 million acres, including 4.3 million in California. Martin, who grew up in Santa Cruz, lives two hours north of San Francisco in a heavily forested part of Sonoma County.
One night that August, she and her partner witnessed a furious storm. “The blades of electricity bisected the air,” Martin writes in the book. “My insides were set abuzz. My lungs contracted like they’d just hit cold water; my jaw compacted into itself; every muscle in my pelvis … felt as though it had been turned to wood. Somewhere inside my brain every synapse fired, and I was thrust into a whorl of anxiety: go, go, go.”
“The response to disaster can’t be to do the exact same thing all over again,” says Manjula Martin, author of the new memoir “The Last Fire Season.”
(Manjula Martin)
They decided to evacuate a few days later, as the rapidly developing Lightning complex fire was drawing near. The coastal redwoods that towered over her house had never seemed so vulnerable — and neither had she.
Packed in her “go bag” was an ample supply of pain medication. A dislodged IUD had led to a hysterectomy and other surgeries, leaving Martin with chronic, debilitating pain. She was learning to live in a changing, damaged body, just as the forest over her head was adapting its own series of catastrophes. As a writer, she loves embracing that metaphor, along with its contradictions.
“I think the ghost of Susan Sontag is always looking over my shoulder when I talk about my health crisis and compare it to the wildfire crisis,” she says with a laugh, in reference to Sontag’s famous excoriation of “Illness as Metaphor.” But the parallels resonated in her life.
“In a practical way, an everyday life kind of way, I found that I had skills that I didn’t know I had because of my health crisis,” she adds. “Those skills included understanding that things are never gonna be the same. And that sucks. But it also opens up all these interesting, weird … nonconventional ways of thinking and interacting with each other and with the land.”
Like the scorched forests around her home, she had also been harmed by companies “who are OK with a certain margin of error in their product.” At the same time, “accidents are accidents. They’re not always someone’s fault. But that was really the key to connecting my personal experience of harm with these larger systems that are very intricately linked to climate change.”
What opened her up to the parallels, Martin says, was gardening. “Once I started gardening as I was recovering from my surgeries — there’s that very cliché thing of putting your hands in dirt — but that cliché comes from truth. It wasn’t that feeling of life cycles and generation and renewal necessarily. It was the pleasure.” It was also the stark, clarifying push-and-pull with nature: “You do things that are harmful, like cutting things, and the plants push back, and then you have to wait a year to find out what’s gonna happen.”
Waiting for a body or a forest to heal involves an analogous kind of patience. But if Martin had simply dropped her metaphor and left it at that, her memoir would be much shorter and less interesting. Instead, the author is quick to acknowledge the flaws and contradictions in such comparisons. Gardening, for one, is a privilege, and she is well aware of the ways economics, race and historical forces have influenced her relationship with nature.
The stewardship of the land by California’s Indigenous people included “good fire,” the types of prescribed burns increasingly recognized as a key to preventing massive firestorms. In recent years, many tribal fire experts have been asked to fix the forests.
But Martin says the approach needs to be cooperative and collaborative. Her book quotes Margo Robbins, a Yurok fire expert: “Native people can’t do it on their own … we don’t own that much of the land, for one thing.”
“I think it’s especially the responsibility of those who have carried out these harmful actions to make reparations,” Martin tells me, “both to the land and its original inhabitants. And it’s the responsibility of all who benefit from these harms to ensure that happens. I include myself in that group, as a white property owner who is a direct beneficiary of the colonization of the land where I live.”
This is one reason that, despite the fact that 2020 was definitely not the last fire season, Martin and her partner are staying put. “What you have to do is learn to adjust and live in the new normal as it will be,” she says.
Just don’t attach a hashtag to her actions: “In some neighborhoods, you’ll see a lot of signs that say ‘Thank you, firefighters.’ I don’t fault those emotions. They’re very real. But it’s what I call ‘hashtag hope.’ The response to disaster [can’t] be to do the exact same thing all over again.”
Martin understands that terms like “new normal” might feel like defeat — as toothless in its way as the dreaded word hope. In the book, however, she draws inspiration from eco-psychologist Joanna Macy, who argues that despair opens us up possibilities for change. Martin’s body and her environment have taught her a lot about despair, but also about adaptation.
As we finish our chat, Martin asks me to stay on the line while she moves outside. “They’re babies,” she says, gesturing to the hundred-year-old redwoods that tower over her lawn. “I used to wonder why, when it’s windy, trees don’t just instantly fall down, they’re so tall,” she says. “And I realized it’s because they’re alive. The same way a person standing upright doesn’t fall down — they’re alive. They dance.”
Berry writes for a number of publications and tweets @BerryFLW.
That’s both a promise and a challenge she delivers, since what follows may rub some viewers the wrong way. Yet Gyllenhaal’s full-throttle commitment to her vision is compelling in and of itself, and she has marshalled an absolutely smashing-looking and -sounding production. The story proper begins in 1936 Chicago, which, like everything and everyplace else in the movie, has been luminously shot by cinematographer Lawrence Sher and sumptuously conjured by production designer Karen Murphy. Her involvement is appropriate given that her previous credits include Bradley Cooper’s A STAR IS BORN and Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS, since among other things, THE BRIDE! is a nostalgic musical. Its Frankenstein (Christian Bale), who has taken the name of his maker, is obsessed with big-screen tuners, and imagines himself in elaborate song-and-dance numbers. (Considering the reception to JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX, one must applaud the daring of Warner Bros. for greenlighting another expensive film in which a tormented protagonist has that kind of fantasy life.)
THE BRIDE! may be revisionist on many levels, but its characterization of its “monster” holds true to past screen incarnations from Karloff’s to Elordi’s: His scarred appearance masks a lonely soul who desires companionship. Frankenstein has arrived in Chicago to seek out Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), correctly believing she has the scientific know-how to create an appropriate mate for him. Rather than piece one together, Dr. Euphronious resurrects the corpse of Ida (Jessie Buckley), whose consorting with underworld types led to her brutal death. Previously chafing against the man’s world she inhabited in life, she becomes even more defiant and unruly as a revenant, apparently possessed by the spirit of Shelley herself, declaiming in free-associative sentences and quoting rebellious literature.
Buckley, currently an Oscar favorite for her very different literary-inspired role in HAMNET, tears into the role of the Bride (who now goes by the name Penny) with invigorating abandon that bursts off the screen. Unsure of her identity yet overflowing with self-confident bravado, she’s the opposite of the sensitive “Frank,” but they’re united by the world that stands against them. That becomes literal when a violent incident sends them on the lam, road-tripping to New York City and beyond, on a trail inspired by the films of Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), Frank’s favorite song-and-dance-man star.
With THE BRIDE!, Gyllenhaal has made a film that’s at once her very own and a feverish homage to all sorts of cinema past and present. It’s a horror story, a lovers-on-the-run movie, a crime thriller, a musical and more, and historical fealty be damned if it makes for a good scene (as when Penny and Frank sneak into a 3D movie over a decade before such features became popular). In-references are everywhere: It might just be a coincidence that the couple’s travels take them past Fredonia, NY (cf. “Freedonia” in the Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP), but it’s certainly no accident that the former Ida is targeted by a crime boss named Lupino, referencing the actress and pioneering filmmaker whose works included noirs and women’s-issues stories. Penny’s exploits lead legions of admiring women to adopt her look and anarchic attitude, echoing the first JOKER (while a headline calls them “Twisted Sisters”), and the use of one Irving Berlin song in a Frankensteinian context immediately recalls a classic comedic take on the property.
Whether the audience should be put in mind of a spoof at a key point in a film with different goals is another matter. At times like these, Gyllenhaal’s pastiche ambitions overtake emotional investment in the story. As strong as the two lead performances are (Bale is quite moving, conveying a great deal of soul from behind his extensive prosthetics), it’s easier to feel for them in individual scenes than during the entire course of the just-over-two-hour running time. The diversions can be entertaining, to be sure, but they also result in an uncertainty of tone. The dissonance continues straight through to the end, where the filmmaker’s choice of closing-credits song once again suggests we’re not supposed to take all this too seriously.
There’s nonetheless much to admire and enjoy about THE BRIDE!, and this kind of risk-taking by a major studio is always to be encouraged (especially considering that we’ll see how long that lasts at Warner Bros. once Paramount takes it over). Beyond the terrific work by the aforementioned actors, there’s fine support from Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz as detectives on Penny and Frank’s heels, with Sandy Powell’s lavish costumes and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s rich, varied score vital to fashioning this fully imagined world. Kudos also to makeup and prosthetics designer Nadia Stacey and to Chris Gallaher and Scott Stoddard, who did those honors on Frank, for their visceral, evocative work. Uneven as it may be, THE BRIDE! is also as alive! as any film you’ll likely see this year.
New animated sequences of songs from “Encanto,” “Frozen 2” and “Moana 2” are headed to Disney+.
Disney Animation announced Wednesday that “Songs in Sign Language,” comprised of three musical numbers from recent Disney movies newly reimagined in American Sign Language, will debut April 27 in honor of National Deaf History Month.
Directed by veteran Disney animator Hyrum Osmond, “Songs in Sign Language” will feature fresh animation for “Encanto’s” chart-topper “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” “Frozen 2’s” poignant ballad “The Next Right Thing” and “Moana 2’s” anthem “Beyond.” Produced by Heather Blodget and Christina Chen, the new versions of these songs were created in collaboration with L.A.-based theater company Deaf West Theatre.
“In the majority of cases, we created entirely new animation,” Osmond said in a press statement. “There were a lot of adjustments that we had to do within the animation to be true to the original intention.”
Deaf West Theatre artistic director DJ Kurs, sign language reference choreographer Catalene Sacchetti and a group of eight performers from Deaf West worked together to craft and choreograph the ASL version of the musical numbers for “Songs in Sign Language.” The creatives focused on being true to the concepts and emotion of the songs rather than direct translations of the lyrics.
Kurs said his team jumped at the chance to collaborate and integrate ASL into “the fabric of Disney storytelling.”
“Disney stories are the universal language of childhood,” Kurs said in a statement. “The chance to bring our language into that world was a historic opportunity to reach a global audience. Working on this project was very emotional. For so long, we have known and loved the artistic medium of Disney Animation. Here, the art form was adapting to us. I hope this unlocks possibilities in the minds and hearts of Deaf children, and that this all leads to more down the road.”
Osmond, who led a team of more than 20 animators on this project, said animation was the perfect medium to showcase sign language, which he described as “one of the most beautiful ways of communication on Earth.” The director, whose father is deaf, also saw this project as an opportunity to connect with the Deaf community.
“Growing up, I never learned sign language, and that barrier prevented me from really connecting with my dad,” Osmond said. “This reimagining of Disney Animation musical numbers helps bring down barriers and allows us to connect in a special way with our audiences in the Deaf community. I’m grateful that the Studio got behind making something so impactful.”
(Credits: Far Out / Elevation Pictures)
Maxime Giroux – ‘In Cold Light’
The action is relentless in the complex thriller In Cold Light, a tense combination of crime and fugitive tale and family drama. It is the third feature and first English language film by Maxime Giroux, best known for a very different kind of film, the critically acclaimed 2014 drama Felix & Meira.
The tension and high energy of In Cold Light almost overwhelm the film, but are relieved, barely, by moments of character development and introspection that keep the audience pulling for the restrained and outwardly cold main character.
Speaking at the film’s Canadian premiere, director Giroux admitted he found creating an action film a challenge. Part of his approach was using very minimal dialogue, especially for the central character, letting the action speak for itself, and allowing silence to intensify suspense. Giroux has said he likes the lack of dialogue and speaks highly of the importance of silence in cinema; he prefers using “physical aspects of communication” in his films.
Young Ava Bly (Maika Monroe) is a competent and businesslike drug dealer, working in partnership with her brother Tom (Jesse Irving) and a small team. As the film begins, Ava has just been released from a brief prison sentence. She is hoping to return to her former position, but her brother’s associates consider her a risk due to her recent incarceration. While she works to re-establish herself, a shocking encounter with a corrupt police officer sends Ava’s life into chaos and forces her to go on the run.
Ava’s fugitive experience introduces a new character, to whom Ava turns for help: her father, Will Bly, played by Troy Kotsur, known for his excellent performance in CODA. Their first interaction is handled in a fascinating way, as Will is deaf and the two communicate through sign language. This, of course, provides another form of the silent interaction the director prefers; he explained that much of the father-daughter interaction was rewritten with the actor in mind. Their conflict is nicely expressed through a scene in which their initial conversation is intermittently cut off by a faulty light which goes out periodically, making communication through sign momentarily impossible, nicely expressing the rift between father and daughter.
As Ava continues to evade danger, her escape becomes complicated by new information, placing her in a painful dilemma. We gradually learn more about Ava, her background, and her character through occasional flashbacks and glimpses of her dreams. The plot becomes more complex and more poignant, and gains features of a mystery as well as an action tale, as she is pressed to choose from among equally unacceptable alternatives.
The climax of her efforts to protect both herself and those close to her comes to a head as she meets with the director of a rival drug gang. Veteran actress Helen Hunt is perfect in the minor but significant role of Claire, the rival drug lord, who plays odd mind games with Ava in an intriguing psychological fencing match. It’s an unusual scene, in which Ava’s personality is made clearer, and Claire’s understated dominance and casual speech do not quite conceal the threat she represents.
The frantic pace and emotional turmoil are enhanced by the camera work, which tends to focus tightly on Ava, and by a harsh, minimal musical score that sets the tone without distracting from the action. Giroux chose to shoot the film in Super 60; he describes digital as “too perfect” for the look he was going for, and since “Ava is rough,” the film portrays her better. The director describes the entire movie as “rough,” in fact, and deliberately chose a dark, washed-out look for much of the footage, occasionally using light and colour, in the form of fireworks, lightning, or a colourful carnival, to both relieve and emphasise the darkness.
The dynamic, intense story holds the attention in spite of the lengthy, sometimes repetitive chase scenes and subdued dialogue. Ava’s predicament, and the difficult decisions she is forced to make, are made surprisingly relatable, from the initial disaster that starts the action to the surprising flash-forward that concludes the film, on as high a note as the situation could allow. Fans of action movies will definitely enjoy this one.
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