The Lost Bus

In “The Lost Bus,” the worst wildfire in California’s history, 2018’s Camp Fire, which burned up 150,000 acres, caused 16 million in damage, and took 85 lives, is seen predominantly through the eyes of real-life school bus driver Kevin McKay who was enlisted to evacuate 22 students and their two teachers to safety. Director Paul Greengrass and his co-screenwriter Brad Inglesby load up their Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) with all manner of personal problems, many of which were based on fact, like a sick son, and some which were not, like his work superior (Ashlie Atkinson) not being too keen on his job performance. I understand the dramatic impulse given a factual story that does not provide traditional tidy closure, but it can’t help feeling callous, creating a narrative hurdle for Kevin to cross, as if shepherding kids through an inferno is the only way he can prove his self-worth. It makes “The Lost Bus” feel like the sort of Hollywood disaster movie it often transcends. 

The real drama is strictly elemental, a battle against the elements, man v fire. Rather than a distant cloud of smoke, Greengrass does not recount the start of the fire, a faulty power line stemming from corporate malfeasance and spurred on by unrelenting dry conditions, through the point-of-view of a character but with the camera itself, showing that deadly wind whipping through trees, as if evoking the wildfire’s emergent pulse, not just bringing the blaze to life but making it feel terrifyingly alive. And though Greengrass keeps touching base with the firefighters and their increasingly futile efforts at containment, he smartly keeps his focus on the bus while also keeping any sense of exploitative action set pieces to a minimum. In doing so, the lost bus becomes a kind of allegory, akin to a skiff in a flood, of mankind overwhelmed in a losing battle against the escalating effects of climate change. At one point, rather than continuing to try and navigate their way out of the all-encompassing smoke, Kevin decides to just stop the bus when he realizes they seem to be in the one place where the fire isn’t, hoping to wait it out. But eventually, the fire finds them anyway.