Bring Your Own Brigade

Directed by Lucy Walker

★★★★

Photo Credit

Courtesy of CBS News

Copyright

© CBS News 2021. All rights reserved.

From the outside looking in, two time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker’s Bring Your Own Brigade feels similar to many documentaries of its kind, a documentary that spends its entire length examining every little detail about how firefighters operate and how they, indeed, fight fires. Brigade definitely shows this, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Expectedly, the film begins discussing the recent California fires, introducing us to a man named Mike, who was right in the path of the fires, but was able to save his home. Though he is not an actor, the camera loves him. He brings real heart and grounds out this film, giving us a real world perspective into what kind of toll these fires have on people (also his mother is probably the coolest old lady I’ve ever seen).

Brigade takes you into the thick of it, with actual footage and audio of the devastating fires, putting us right into the chaos and fear the fires evoke. What we see are visuals that are haunting and terrifying, conveying a sense of isolating suffocation, while what we hear is truly heart wrenching. I usually don’t have a problem with this kind of stuff in film, the legitimacy of its reality brought me to tears. Bring Your Own Brigade puts you in its subjects' shoes, showing you what it would feel like to be in that kind of chaos.

The film takes an unexpected turn, actually diving into what causes these kinds of fires, which felt like such a fresh take on this kind of documentary. The film options to take a step back and actually examine what could be causing these disasters, giving a hard look at  global warming, poor forestry practices, and reactive instead of proactive responses.

 If you're looking for a truly heartbreaking, yet rather pragmatic look at fire and fire fighting tactics, definitely give Bring Your Own Brigade a watch, just be ready for a hell of an emotional roller coaster.