Brad Weldon is the “hippie star” and narrator for a long documentary about the California wildfires entitled “Bring Your Own Brigade” ( BYOB.) Brad fought the Camp Fire of November 8, 2018, for 7 or 8 hours to save his house, likening it to “fighting an elephant with a piece of spaghetti.”
In the course of this 127 minute documentary by London-born director Lucy Walker there is riveting personal testimony and eerily beautiful cinematography (摄影师Fenwick，Delaney和Smith的荣誉), of entire hillsides on fire or the sun sinking behind the mountains with a smokey wasteland conjuring up images of Dante’s “Inferno.” Walker is a 2-time Oscar nominee for her documentaries and a 7-time Emmy nominee (she won once). Educated at Oxford and New York University’s Film School, she is known for “The Crash Reel,” “Devil’s Playground,” and “Waste Land.”
Those who lived in the ironically-named Paradise, California, were sometimes told to evacuate, sometimes given misinformation on the phone, and sometimes trapped without hope. Brad Weldon talked about “angels” being responsible for his home’s survival.
大火过后，布拉德向20个无家可归的邻居开了门。在整部电影中展示了他90岁的老年母亲，盲人而无法走路，布拉德满足了她的需求，其中包括一些大麻饼干，这些大麻饼干加剧了整个想法，即六十年代的嬉皮士居住在26,000名居民的镇上位于萨克拉曼多以北85英里处。
On November 8, 2018, eighty-six of the town’s residents died in California’s deadliest wildfire, called the Camp Fire. Paradise residents either received inadequate warning to evacuate or chose to stay, but when they all attempted to leave at once on the narrow roads, the result was pandemonium and chaos. One resident, mentioning that Paradise was one of the few California towns with no sewer system, made the comment that the town “can’t even get its shit together.” In fact, the town did have an evacuation plan that they had actually practiced, but no one factored in that it would affect the entire town simultaneously.
That verdict is borne out by the scenes of panicked people describing horrific scenes (“我的车上的后视镜融化了”) and the remarks of a local architect (他的房子不是用木头建造的）who said, “You can tell something is going horribly wrong.” Were it not for an enterprising firefighter who used a bulldozer to push flaming cars off the road so that others could escape, the casualties might have been even higher.
只有5％的当地建筑逃脱了火灾。市议会在一次会议上指出，2008年后建造的房屋中有55％的房屋幸存下来，而在2008年之前建造的房屋中只有9％，理由是更严格的消防安全规则和法规，并呼吁对未来采取更多这样的警告措施面对局部抵抗。正如导演所说：“在人身自由的口头禅下，自我侵犯。”I couldn’t help but find the situation similar to today’s Congressional stand-off and the inability of the town’s residents to see that the 5-foot fire break requested by local fire officials would not really infringe on their personal freedom all that much, but could have helped save their homes.
这部电影的前三分之一至一半是精美拍摄的。当它向人民和道路赛跑时，很难从“ 400英尺的火龙卷风”上移开视线。大火后燃烧的土地的场景就像启示录一样。“提取船员”不得不从汽车上拆除尸体，这些尸体无法一次立即离开城镇，并在工作中表现出来，谈论了令人震惊的工作。
The first 45 minutes of the film is phenomenal. The last 82 minutes, which talk about the fire’s origins, the post-fire town, and the future, drag. The documentary moves on to ponder several questions: How did this happen? What were the causes? What can be done to stop something like this from happening in the future, if anything? Is there a widening gulf between the “haves”—[like Kim Kardashian, who shares that she and Kanye hired a private fire force]—and the have-nots, who waited for help and got none. It’s worth mentioning that Paradise, which was all but totally destroyed, had homes whose median value was $200,000; it suffered 28 times the casualties of Malibu (3 dead), where homes clock in at $3.5 million.
The entire scenario seemed part of Trump’s America with “YOYO” (you’re on your own) the philosophy of survivors. Amazingly, those onscreen who were asked about global warming and its contribution to the proliferation of fatal fires pronounced that global warming was “a hoax,” just as fervently as did those who declared Covid-19 to be a hoax, right up until their relatives or friends died from it. In this case, however, the residents who have just lost their homes to the fire still deny climate change. At least there were many alternative theories and facts presented to give them some ammunition in their denials. The forest fires have been happening in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and none other than long-dead celebrity Zsa Zsa Gabor is seen in a brief cameo discussing the first of many years ago. 22 died in Santa Rosa in 2017; 22 died in the Thomas Fire.
最后，有一个回想起土著人民的古老智慧，例如北叉单部落或卡鲁克人，他们的古老智慧很可能会被利用，以防止这种未来的灾难。消防员的PTSD由其中一个名叫Phil的人阐明，他谈到了自杀和离婚以及其他尽力而为，但由于无法控制大自然母亲而受到责备。菲尔在发表言论后六天去世。
It’s a very good look at the causes and the potential cures, with a great deal of history mixed into the final two-thirds of the film.
华丽的摄影。引人入胜的现实戏剧。思考的食物。不喜欢什么？
