Notre Dame on Fire

It was good. Notre Dame on Fire delights with a pleasantly sober cinematic grip, where none of the characters is "the main one" and everyone just fills their role in a procedural web of actions and reactions within a real event. And it's very impressively shot. The special effects are at such a level that their inclusion blends perfectly with the real shots used and you hardly notice the transition between them. That’s something you rarely see. (09/10/2022)

A reenactment of the 2019 national disaster where Notre-Dame, a symbol of Paris, burned down. Jean Jacques Annaud is an experienced director, though it must be admitted that his best years were two decades ago, but this he chose a rather attractive subject matter that begged for a film treatment, even if he took his own way of doing it, and that didn't sit well with me. There's no main character, so there's nobody to root for, and the film lacks any emotion because of it, which is a pretty major problem. It's shot in a modest way, it looks quite made-for-TV at times, but that didn't detract significantly. The beginning of the disaster itself is handled decently and there is definitely a high level of negligence on the part of the workers. Something like this could definitely have been avoided with the right attitude. The running time could have been shorter, watching firefighters put out a fire for an hour gets a little tiresome, especially when there's no one there to yell. It should probably be seen, but I can't say that I enjoyed watching it. 5/10 (09/04/2022)

Top-notch work with the blending of archival and staged footage, and a fierce montage most of the time, which exhausts you all the more in the right way as it thickens the action and puts new obstacles that take away the most precious thing: time. Annaud more or less ignores poetic insertions and, apart from the necessary emphasis on the immeasurable significance of Notre-Dame (religious through the relics present, national through the president present or architectural, which is explained by the guides in the introduction), he opts for an almost documentary realistic form, without any clichés, last-minute rescues, or heroic self-sacrifice. The firefighters represent a rather anonymous and dedicated workforce facing the biggest challenge of their careers, and Annaud manages to make sure the audience fully understands the importance of their mission. At several moments I was tense as a string, and perhaps it's just a pity about the finale, when the intensity lets up at the expense of a sensitive multiperspective experience. A top-notch catastrophe movie, the likes of which are hardly ever made anymore, with an experienced filmmaker who knows how to observe events objectively, not to force the audience into certain emotions and interpretations. The fifth star is not very far. 85 % (04/21/2022)

The Notre-Dame fire is undoubtedly one of the most significant events in French history in recent years. Three years ago, it was not only a cathedral that burned down, but also one of the symbols of Paris, France and perhaps even of Europe. On the verge of his 80th birthday, Jean-Jacques Annaud takes on this (literally) searing story and made a film with both fiction and archival footage that presents this infamous event quite faithfully, but without getting into any unnecessary narrative around it. Everything centers on the cathedral, the devastating fire, the determination of the firefighters and their race against time. I was initially a little distracted by the embedded archive footage and there were a few 'weird' scenes that didn't need to be in the film, but it's still a solid drama with a strong documentary feel and more than one suspenseful scene. (04/24/2022)

What did I take away from the film? Yeah, it took a lot of work to put the fire out. That's all the movie gave me. The result is very inconsistent, because on the one hand I appreciate the footage of the real event, and I equally liked the insight into the internal practices of the firefighters, the demonstration of their real equipment, machines and robots, as well as the ashes flying all around and the lead flowing from the gargoyles. But on the other hand, qualitatively it's a bit of a TV movie. After a while the plot loses a pace, your interest linearly declines and in the end the film actually left me quite cold and didn't evoke any significant emotions. If the film was 30 minutes shorter and and more like a documentary, the result would have been noticeably better. This way feels unnecessarily long, but in the end I definitely can't say that it changed my life or perspective on the event. For fans of similar events and firefighters I guess it's a must, but otherwise I don't see why I would recommend Notre-Dame on Fire to anyone... (01/11/2023)