The Fire Within

This is a very good incredibly well made movie. All though it’s less of a movie and more of a philosophical character study. This is a very depressing and honestly boring nearly 2 hours. However that doesn’t take away from how well made, written and thought provoking this movie is nonetheless. However it’s not for everyone and i certainly wouldn’t recommend this movie to everyone. It’s very heavy. The main character Alain. Is very depressed and in a very negative way. He’s the kind of depressed where as much as you feel bad for him you have to recognize the negatives he’s doing to himself and the people around him. Alain is incredible insecure and he’s constantly talking about it to everyone he meets and making it incredibly obvious in his body language and how he carries himself. He goes through the movie mindlessly walking around and meeting with old friends. Where he mostly stares at them blankly and trauma dumps. Maurice Ronet gives an amazing performance possibly his best. His character is also a reformed alchoholic, yet he continuously puts himself in places where he’d be around alchohol and drinkers against just doctors advice. Basically he’s just incredibly self destructive. He’s just in a constant state of angst. He seems like a sad teenage boy and his friend even calls him out for being stuck in adolescence at one point. And the worst part is Alain is fully aware and perfectly contempt with this. He makes no effort to try to change and be better and when people try to reach out to him he shuts them down. It’s a very accurate representation of depression and how people’s energy becomes drained.  Alain is also married, his wife lives in America and pays for his treatment at a rehab in France. He doesn’t hear from his wife anymore and entertains himself with different French women he pursues. However he clearly misses his wife as she remains a central character throughout despite not actually appearing in the film besides being mentioned in nearly every scene. The movie also has great cinematography. Every shot is very picturesque and the dialogue is well written. And also I like the way the world around Alain reacts realistically to his behavior and I love the attention to detail of the little things in this movie like Alain’s room decorations, the necklace falling over in the opening scene. It all feels very meticulous. So this was a great  movie, but very depressing.  Would not watch it again for a while due to that.