LFF 2020: Wildfire
lffThere is absolutely no debate that Wildfire is an ambitious film. Even in the very opening frames, writer-director Cathy Brady, for whom this is a debut feature outing, expresses a clear intention for her film to be understood as something more than a solemn drama about sisterhood, grief and coping with loss of a parent. Granted, it must be an extremely personal film for her, but it is purposefully designed to work as a reflection of what an entire generation of young people currently growing up in Northern Ireland must be going through, as well, on a societal level.
To this end, Brady opens her film with an archival newsreel of a deadly bombing perpetrated by the IRA. Grainy, shaky images show chaos and destruction with distraught victims trying to evade danger. Then, she cuts to a more familiar set of images lifted from the news coverage of the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum which might have inadvertently re-ignited the centuries-long conflict thus far smouldering beneath the epidermis of normalcy grafted on the region by The Good Friday Agreement. It is clear the filmmaker is taking a strong political stance by choosing these particular images to be an opening gambit for her story. In fact, together with the images – a grainy home video to which the characters in the film briefly refer at one point – she chose to close the film with, these unsettling images unequivocally form a framing device whose purpose is to position the narrative nested between them to work as an allegory.
Therefore, the story about Kelly (Nika McGuigan, who tragically died of cancer when the film was in post-production), a woman coming back come to reunite with her sister Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone) after having been missing for a period of time, is to be understood on two distinct levels: direct and symbolic. Wildfire is equally poised to function as a story about the mental trauma of coping with suppressed memories of a tragedy the two women witnessed in their youth, as it is to use these characters and their arcs as tools to get at something different. In fact, Brady hints rather decisively that she is keen for the audience to peek beneath the superficial layer of traditional narrative and decode the allegorical meaning of events of the story as they unfold, in real time. After all, there is a reason why the film takes place in an ambiguously unnamed Northern Irish town. This decision generalizes the narrative, as though to say it could happen anywhere.
Such highly symbolic language is deployed elsewhere as well, and it is almost always used to reorient the story towards its broader political aspirations. One key scene involves the sisters dancing in a bar to “Gloria” by Van Morrison. Drenched in pink and blue hues of dancefloor light, Kelly and Lauren bond by aligning the movement of their bodies with the rhythm of the song by the most well-known Northern Irish musician. Neither the choice of the song nor the idea of dancing is accidental. Brady is using this scene to make a statement. She wants everyone to know that young people who grew up in the long shadow cast by the bloody history of the region are sick and tired of living under the gun of the unresolved conflict. They want to connect with the more positive aspects of their historical legacy and free themselves from the generational trauma of The Troubles.
In case this allegory wasn’t exactly clear, the scene doesn’t conclude there. Eventually, the blissful joy of bonding through dance is ruined when the women are accosted by an older drunk gentleman making lewd remarks in their direction. They immediately recognise the man as a former IRA terrorist who they know was responsible for planning an attack which claimed the life of their dad. A brawl ensues and the scene ends with them ejected from the bar. As much as this scene works as a standalone character moment cementing the relationship between Kelly and Lauren and hints at their own unresolved issues, it is predominantly intended to be an allegorical indictment of a generation of young Northern Irish folks unable to live free of being oppressed by their past.
Wildfire is teeming with many more such nuggets of thematic richness folded into the narrative. It even goes as far as to include the title itself, a natural process of catharsis ecosystems periodically go through to cleanse themselves of the past and make space for new life to flourish. Brady’s film is hence much more than just an indie drama about psychological torment, dealing with loss and re-establishing long lost sororal bonds. It is a complex allegory born of righteous anger at the fact that the cycle of misery is going to continue and reverberate continually through generations unless somebody makes a stand. Wildfire is for Northern Ireland what Pablo Larraín’s Ema is for Chile: a furious battle cry and a soulful attempt at reckoning with the past all rolled into one brave piece of filmmaking.
Even though its political allegory can’t be called watertight by any stretch of the imagination and the film indulges occasionally in narrative clichés, Cathy Brady pulls off a laudable debut that stands a fair chance of becoming an amplifier for the voiceless generation continuously told to sit down and shut up by adults clad in suits and ties. Honest, cerebral and organically furious, Wildfire is an outstanding feature and a clear sign Cathy Brady is a filmmaker to watch.
