Random Movie Reviews: The Fire Within/Le Feu Follet (1963) - Random Movie Review #2

Technical information:

Director: Louis Malle
Starring: Maurice Ronet, Léna Skerla, Bernard Noël, Jeanne Moreau
Runtime: 108 min
Color: Black and White

Short review (spoiler free):

The movie is extremely slow, but don't let it fool you into thinking this is a boring movie with nothing good in it. This movie deals with the extremly heavy topic of suicide and the reason to live. Is there really no real reason to live at all? Do we just have to accept that there is no good reason to live and carry on living despite life's meaninglessness? Or is life's meaning something we just fail to see, sometimes right in front of us? One depressed man tries to find the answer through a personal existential journey he sets out one morning with his old friends.

A multi-facet, thought-provoking movie with a strong sense of surrealism, this movie is highly recommended for those who are patient enough and want to see a movie that forces its viewers to think and make their own interpretation, and don't mind seeing suicide being portrayed in a movie.

Rating: Red/Red

Review (heavy spoiler):

In my last Random Review entry, I emphasized on the significance of Detective Story to my view of cinema. Long story short, Detective Story was the movie that set out my curiosity for morally-ambiguous films with slow pace building up in contract to flashy one-time movies. Detective Story was such a big deal because it was the first time I had seen a movie of that kind. At that time, it was the absolute king of all.

But how about a movie that made a strong impact on me in general?

I’m talking about one movie that, unlike Detective Story, still haunts me just as much as the first time I saw it. The one movie that, to this day, still beholds so much mystery waiting for me to explore with each new viewing. The movie that contains so much meaning that you only need to tilt your viewpoint a little to get a whole new message.

And surprisingly enough, such a great movie comes in the form of a simple story about a depressed man going around to meet old friend.

The Fire Within (or originally Le Feu Follet) has an interesting history. It was originally a 1930 French novel by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (who is largely unknown outside France possibly because his work does not resonate too well with the rest of the world). The book, in turn, was based on the life of a friend of his called Jacques Rigaut, a rather depressed poet who killed himself while undergoing cocaine rehab in a clinic at the age of 30. The book is a half-real-half-fictional account of Rigaut’s last days before he pulled the gun’s trigger. And then things get reaaaaally interesting: the year was early 1960s. Louis Malle was going to turn 30, and he was suffering from depression. For some reason, instead of planning a suicide like Jacques Rigaut, he recalled a small novel he read some time as a teenager, and decided that a film based on the novel would suit his current mood. And The Fire Within was finally created in 1963. So now we have a movie based on a book based on a real-life person. Inception much?

With such a history, you could imagine what you would get out this movie. If you expect a strong story-driven plot with a ton of exciting twist and turn, then throw that expectation out of the window right away. This movie makes no attempt to hide any plot twist from you. It’s a sad story of day of a depressed man, and that’s what it is. Take it or leave it.

So be prepared, if you choose the former, this movie is going to go reaaaaaly slooooowly (as evidence in how slow the opening credit runs :D).

Despite its nationwide success after the initial release, today, The Fire Within is a relative obscure movie outside France. It doesn’t necessary mean no one cares about it. In fact, there are some reviews I can find online, both in written and video forms. However, none of the reviews fully sastify me, as they are too focused on the abstract philosophical aspects of the movie’s symbolism that they leave some crucial questions unanswered (I don’t blame though, this is a pretty difficult movie to dissert). So today, in my review, I’m going to put my focus on the more down-to-earth, psychological aspects of the movie, as well as deconstructing the details that I think most reviews out there leave out of fail to explain properly.

So, without further ado…

Part 1: A Depressed Man (the first half of the movie)

A little date

The movie starts with a naked Alain Leroy (Maurice Ronet) lying next to a woman while a passage of the original book is read in the background. I’ll let the passage narrate what is going on in this scene:

At that moment, Alain studied Lydia's face relentlessly, as he had been doing since she came to see him three days earlier. What was he looking for? Lydia turned her head away, lowered her eyelids, and grew absorbed. ln what? ln herself? Was it her contented rage that swelled her neck and belly? This sensation that emanated nothing, but was so clear? Once again the feeling had eluded him, like a snake between stones.

If you are guessing that the two people are having sex, that’s exactly what is happening. But something feels very off about this scene. Lydia seems like she is doing and feeling the act, quite intensely, but what about Alain? Is there anyone who have enough composure to form such a detached and detailed observation about his partner while enjoying an intense round of sex? Lydia (Léna Skerla) is enjoying the sex, while Alain tries to, but is unable to (Once again the feeling had eluded him, like a snake between stones).

There is a link between sex and mood. Long story short, depression lowers the ability to enjoy sex, and in turn, sex can potentially boost mood for depressed people. Thus, nothing speaks for Alain’s condition better than this little detail. He has reached the point where he is no longer able to feel sex. What’s left for him is the detachment and a sense of anxiety (relentlessly).

After the round of sex, the two start exchanging conversation while checking out of the hotel, walking into a pub, and returning to Alain’s clinic. It turns out that Lydia is a good friend of Dorothy, Alain’s wife who has been separated from him since he went into alcohol rehab. Lydia is currently paying a visit to him to check on him on behalf of Dorothy. She also offers some comfort service on her own without Dorothy’s knowledge, including words of comfort, a check with a large sum of money, and as the movie subtly implies, a good round of sex to boost Alain’s mood.

It’s ironic that the sex is Lydia’s idea, yet she is the one who enjoys it.

Much of a gentle saint that she is, Lydia is unable to accompany Alain 24/7 like he begs her to. Lydia is a busy businesswoman and she only has so much time to spare to visit Alain. All she can offer is some practical comfort and encouragement. When they arrive at the clinic, Alain throws what seem to be a “silent” tantrum, telling her he no longer need her, and send her away. The distress Lydia calls out for Alain as he walks into the clinic without looking back.

Life inside the clinic

We then get to see part of Alain’s daily life inside the clinic. Alain sits silently in his room minding his depressed business until the maid calls him downstairs for lunch. He goes down and eats lunch while listening to people venting about life and forming superficial conversation. He goes outside for some fresh air and looks at the scenery with his depressed eyes. Then he goes back to his room for his depressed business while avoiding too much intimacy with people around him.

There is something unnatural, robotic in the way Alain does things. It seems like he isn’t using his brain while he goes about his daily activity. He looks more like a robot performing preprogrammed tasks without any consideration about the nature of what he is doing. And it also looks like he is trying to do his tasks as fast as possible. He just doesn’t want anyone to get into his way too much. Throughout the sequence, there are two people who shows affection toward him: a fellow patient and the doctor’s wife. But he actively pushes them back, as if he is afraid of human intimacy. What is going on with him, given that just a while ago he was begging a certain woman to never leave him?

Alain remains an emotionless robot, until when he enters his room once more…

What you are seeing is a sequence that lasts for 19 minutes, in which Alain doing seemingly random and meaningless things after being distracted by the sound outside. He looks at and interact with random objects while mumbling to himself, he cuts and sticks a newspaper article about a dead child, he walks around and calls his wife’s name, he plays with random things like a child playing with toys. What in the world are we looking at?

If you take Alain’s excessive alcohol consumption into account, one possible explanation is that he has somehow enters a substance-induced psychotic episode, and he is in fact seeing and interacting with things no one can see. It does look like it, although something about this theory does not hold water. Alain was able to keep his perfect composure during his lunch time. If it was really a psychotic episode, it would be too convenient for it to happen right after he was alone in his room.

Or, could it be that we are seeing Alain’s real self, in contract to his earlier robotic state? Is Alain communicating with his own messy emotional state, trying hard to deal with his personal demon? The chess board, the news about death, the photos of his wife, the tobacco boxes… they are all Alain’s highly personal possession. He is jumping from one thing to another, experiencing the emotion each gives him.

This scene is as meaningless as it is meaningful. The fact that it comes out of nowhere and lasts for so long keep the viewers wondering what exactly is going on and why the movie shows it in the first place. There is no explanation, no clarification. The viewers can make their own interpretation.

Is my life worth it?

Alain then sits down to write something. The movie is implying, as it will later on, that Alain is a writer without a single publication. He is doing the most productive thing he can do in the entire movie. The movie focuses on his tense facial expression as he concentrates on his work, as if it is trying to give the viewer a faint hope for Alain’s future. Maybe he finally found something to do with his life?

But… no, he erases all of his writing in frustration soon after, and then pulling out…

A gun. The implication is just too obvious. We just go from hopefulness to utter worry. He spends some time toying with the deadly thing just as intensely as when he was writing. Is he really going to…?

Luckily for him (and for us), he gets distracted by a honking outside. He goes out and look frantically at the people in the street. Maybe he isn’t ready to do it just yet, and he is trying to find for himself a reason not to do it (from the people out there maybe?). This is also the central theme of the movie, whether to end one’s life or not. Alain is able to put off killing himself for a while, so can the viewers have hope that he may be able to find a reason to keep on living, even when the reason is not convincing?

We then meet Dr. La Barbinais, the doctor who has been treating Alain. Once again, Alain pulls out his calm mask and tries to act as if there is nothing wrong with him.

We learn from the conversation between the two men that Dr. La Barbinais is actively involved in Alain’s personal life. He occasionally offers some comfort for Alain by playing chess with him. He is deeply concerned about Alain’s relationship with Dorothy and encourages him to send telegraphs for her and wait patiently for her reply. He also tries hard to show him a more positive outlook of life. Dr. La Barbinais certainly cares a lot for Alain.

Dr. La Barbinais, however, seems to underestimate the severity of Alain’s depression.

The good doctor is planning for a release for Alain because, as he sees it, Alain has recovered from alcohol addiction. He is so positive of Alain’s prospect that he insists that everything is going well from here. Alain’s, however, is convinced that he is nowhere next to ready to leave. He believes that he will return to alcohol again. He also repeatedly hints to his unresolved inner demon to the doctor, as a reason why he thinks he is not cured. Dr. La Barbinais, either ignorant of the hints or too positive about Alain’s condition, just tells him to try hard to find something positve about life.

In the end, the doctor leaves the room and tells Alain that:

To which Alain replies behind the closed door:

Alain goes back to his gun, contemplacing how life runs so slow inside him and how he wants to speed it up. The movie then seems to cut to the night time and Alain goes to bed, while telling himself that he would kill himself the next day.