Nabil Shaban

Born of Fire

Paul Bergson (Peter Firth), an English flutist, begins to hear strange music in his head during a performance. Anoukin (Suzan Crowley), an astronomer, comes to tell him she's heard it too. What's more, she's convinced it's tied in with disturbances on the sun's surface and volcanic eruptions in Turkey. Interestingly, Paul's father, also a famous flutist, ventured to Turkey years before to learn the breathing secrets of the "Master Musician" and died there. Paul and Anoukin travel to the mysterious village and become involved in a preposterous stew of mumbo-jumbo that apparently will result in the use of music to lacerate the Earth's surface so that it will be consumed by fire. The trouble with BORN OF FIRE is that it is presented with such pompous, would-be philosophical earnestness that it becomes unintentionally hilarious. If the filmmakers didn't take themselves so seriously, this film wouldn't be such an offensive waste of time. Structurally, it is an elliptical mess, jumping back and forth between reality and Firth's character's visions. If there is a weighty symbolic message concerning the essence of music or the nature of the struggle between good and evil contained in the film, as its creators appear to believe there is, it is even more elusive than the secrets Firth has come to explore. To its credit, BORN OF FIRE is slickly photographed and the Turkish locations are beautiful and intriguing. The village, carved into gumdrop hills, looks like surreal cliff dwellings designed by Gaudi.