WILDFIRE BURNS DEEP INSIDE

CHILDREN IN SCHOOL BUS, WIND, FIRE AND HUMANITY

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The wind driven wildfires along the Camp Creek Road set the backdrop for the deadliest fire in California history.

The wind also drives a director and actor together to tell the story of how 22 elementary school children survived the natural disaster.

Director Paul Greengrass uses close cropped camera angles that incrementally piece together a portrait of school bus driver Kevin McKay.

Matthew McConaughey plays Kevin as a guy trying hard but who ultimately cannot get a break during a day with multiple challenges. Kevin has limited range and, as a result, must continually trade off one challenge for the other challenge until nothing gets done properly.

America Ferrara plays a supporting role as the school teacher, Mary Ludwig, in charge of getting the 22 children to safety.

Kevin is kind of pieced together as a non-starter, eventhough he tries his best and knows how to make tough choices. But the life that has been given Kevin just will not work out right for him.

The character’s backstory creates an unhappy context with his father having died four months earlier, and Kevin having moved back home to take care of his widow mother, only to have to then deal with putting down his cancer riddled dog. Kevin also has a personality clash with his teenage son, who would rather be living somewhere else than going to school.

To make matters worse, the new job driving a school bus doesn’t offer enough work to make everything worthwhile by paying the bills.

In this way, the director begins to explain the background of contemporary Americana in the portrayal of how Americans confront, anywhere any day, a mass casualty event.

The narrative continually intertwines, tighter and tighter, the story of the wildfire with the story of the school bus driver and the children in the school bus.

Greengrass creates an interesting natural aesthetic of the wildfire, with the fierce winds and shrapnel from the burning trees hitting the windshield of the bus as Kevin drives through the fire engulfing either side of the roadway.

The atmosphere and tone of the film become increasingly intense as the fire spreads from a two firetruck grass fire to a town fire requiring an evacuation order.

The use of a handheld camera adds to the tone, with the camera purposefully shaking the scenes and moving about unevenly.

If you think this is chaos, just wait for Kevin’s story, whose simple job driving school kids becomes a monumental challenge for him, having to sort out a lot of unregulated emotions that eventually merge with the story of the fire.

McConaughey builds Kevin into the personification of chaos, who eventually feels so much emotional pressure that he has an internal alarm going off inside him – which he tries to vent by lifting his arm up in the air and signaling for all the troops to rally around him.

McConaughey has everyone believing that his character will fall apart entirely and leave his other-worldly responsibilities to take care of his own family.

Then Kevin meets Mary, but the reversal scenes only lead to greater and greater chaos.

McConaughey then entirely plunges into his character who must take on the burden of being responsible for the lives of the children as the wildfire uncontrollably spreads even closer.

The fire chief’s evacuation notice has caused 15 miles of traffic gridlock. And so, Kevin’s chance to be a hero driving the children to safety has built in obstacles. McConaughey acts through several layers of emotions of a good person with many barriers scrambling to survive in a disaster zone.

Kevin does rise to the occasion, heroically.

The tension in the film is maintained by making the outcome always uncertain, while the camera gradually focuses on the story of how individuals can go through extraordinary transformations to survive tremendous adversity.