Burn | B+
There
is a point in Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez’s excellent documentary Burn when one of their subjects describes Detroit as “Katrina without the
hurricane.” When a city loses more than half its population and just as many
businesses over 50 years, there’s a lot of empty real estate. And beyond the
vacant and decaying houses, whole neighborhoods become tinder waiting to burn.
This is the landscape that the overworked and seriously underpaid men of the
beleaguered Engine Co. 50 face every day.
For
one turbulent year, the filmmakers were embedded with the brigade, getting a
front-seat view of their professional and personal lives — and the fires and
bureaucracy they are forced to fight. At first the doc seems to be an
adrenalized case of hero worship with its bro-banter and gung-ho subjects. But
the dynamic on-the-fly scenes of danger and chummy stationhouse camaraderie are
slowly peeled away to reveal a fascinating and multigenerational portrait of
loss, resiliency, frustration and regret.
Though
there is little doubt that these dedicated men love their job, it’s a job that
doesn’t necessarily love them back. Not only do you sense the futility of
putting out flames in a city that seems to be permanently on fire (Detroit gets
up to 30,000 calls per year), but you witness the dangerous deterioration of
their equipment and the fallout of the city’s wrecked economy affecting their
jobs and safety. Rigs go unserviced, gear is held together by duct tape, and
many of the men haven’t seen a pay raise in more than a decade. Worse, they
must endure the near-constant political assault on public sector workers and
their unions. You know things are bad when you’re watching Detroit’s new fire
commissioner, Donald Austin, vacuum his office because the department can’t
afford janitorial services. Any misgivings you might have for Austin, who, at
first, comes off as just another tone-deaf outsider (who ignites controversy
with his let-it-burn policy), is offset by the impossibility of his task and
the obvious seriousness with which he approaches that job.
And
Putnam and Sanchez’s doc digs deeper than Engine Co. 50’s dire political and
professional situation. Burn also explores the personal lives of the
men. There’s 10-year veteran Brendan “Doogie” Milewski, an eager and highly
physical guy who became a firefighter immediately after high school, married
the girl of his dreams and now fights depression and a loss of identity after
being seriously injured when a brick wall collapsed on top of him during a
blaze. Melancholy also hangs from the words of field engine operator Dave
Parnell, whose life has been defined by two things: his 32 years as a fireman,
and his loving wife, who has been struck ill. When he loses his beloved Gloria
halfway through the documentary, it hits home how alone this gently affable and
eminently decent man will be after his imminent retirement.
Visually,
Burn stands out as the first documentary film to take viewers inside of
flaming buildings. Outfitting the firefighters with HD video cameras and using
a fish-eye lens, the movie captures some astounding images. These
montage-driven fire scenes, which pop up repeatedly throughout the film, are
both scary and enthralling, adrenalized by a first-rate rock soundtrack (that,
of course, includes local legends the Stooges). But there’s probably one or two
too many, and with the pummeling accompaniment of Iggy Pop (among others), the
fiery destruction starts to feel a bit like a pyrotechnic music video.
Sharp
and intense, Burn both celebrates and commiserates with Detroit’s
firefighters as it balances character-driven drama, kinetic action and larger
societal implications — all in a amazingly succinct 85 minutes. Then again, when
documentarians encounter 21 fires in the first two days of their year-long
shoot, they undoubtedly learn a few things from their subjects about getting in
and out before anyone gets hurt.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2012.