So this is both a nature documentary and a love story of its two central characters. The two, Katia and Maurice Kraff, died in 1991 but they left behind plenty of footage they shot themselves. This film was made by Sara Dosa, apparently with the encouragement of some of the couple’s friends, to document their remarkable lives and their dedication to their chosen field: the study of volcanoes. It certainly makes for a unique documentary and the images they captured of volcanoes are mesmerizing. Unfortunately I don’t share their love for volcanoes so this isn’t the film for me but I do always enjoy learning about people who choose to live their lives in a way completely unimaginable to anyone else.

Katia and Maurice Kraff were a volcanologist couple, perhaps the only volcanologist couple ever. As this film explains, both were unusually attracted to geology and volcanoes before they ever met, and once they did, their shared interest made them inseparable. They made a life together out of being among the first to travel to every volcanic eruption of note, photographing them, filming, collecting data and samples. They gained a reputation for taking risks as they were willing to go extremely close to the volcanoes, sometimes standing right next to active lava flows. They funded their lifestyle by producing films, books and having Maurice tour the lecture circuit. Later, they developed a special interest in what they call grey volcanoes, so called because of the massive, grey-colored ash clouds they produce. These are apparently far deadlier that the magma flows of red volcanoes whose movements are easier to predict. It probably didn’t come as a surprise their friends and colleagues that they would die while observing the pyroclastic flows of one such volcano, Mount Unzen in Japan, in 1991.

Being fascinated by volcanoes is such a strange and singular obsession that it’s hard for most of us to understand. The film talks about how both were student activists and being disappointed by humanity’s flaws were drawn to volcanoes as geologic entities whose massive scale and power make human problems feel insignificant in comparison. At the same time, Maurice also seems to have an almost suicidal fetish for volcanoes, expressing a wish to crawl right into the belly of one. One scene shows him and another geologist crossing an acid lake on a rubber dinghy, a stunt that Katia, being a chemist, thought was dangerously reckless. More than once, he talks about wanting to construct a specially armored boat to allow him to float along on a lava flow though it seems he couldn’t find anyone crazy enough to participate in that project. Even more so than the subject of volcanoes, I found the psychologies of the couple who eschewed having children, took dangerous risks and devoted both of their lives to this obsession to be far more interesting.

Watching this also made me wonder what it takes for someone to be considered an expert in a field. As far as I can tell the couple were not affiliated with any research institutes and did not publish scientific papers. There is no doubt that they really were experts in the field of volcanoes and the images, videos and samples they collected are invaluable to everyone. Yet because they fund their expeditions themselves by selling books and films and lectures to the public, they have an interest in developing and playing up their public personas. So they don’t just take photos and videos of volcanoes alone, they include themselves in the images that they collect. This may also have driven to take more risks and pursue projects that attract more publicity. Of course being more notable public figures also gave them more clout and one of the ways that they used that clout was to convince governments of the potential danger of eruptions and to organize preemptive evacuations.

I’ll never understand the Kraffs’ love for volcanoes and I think there is an unhealthy aspect to their obsession that the film doesn’t want to touch upon. So the value of this film for me is entirely about learning that there was indeed once such a couple. I do wonder however how their lives might have been different if they had lived perhaps 20 years later. Modern drones would have allowed them to capture images of far higher quality than they managed without risk of personal death and injury. Would they then have been content with exploring volcanoes at a safe remove? I suspect that given their personalities, they wouldn’t have been able to stay away anyway.