Academy Award® winners Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger star in this romantic mystery about hope, redemption and second chances. Sylvia (Theron) is a woman on the edge whose cool, professional demeanor masks a deeply troubled, sexually charged storm within. When a stranger from Mexico confronts her with her mysterious past, she is launched into an emotional journey back to the defining moment of her life. Gina (Basinger) is a housewife trapped in a loveless marriage who finds solace and passion in an illicit affair. Though separated by time and great distances, these women find their lives linked by the forces of love and fate.A painful secret separates a mother and daughter in The Burning Plain, the feature directorial debut by the screenwriter of Babel, 21 Grams, and Amores Perros. The story moves fluidly in time: In the present, Sylvia (Charlize Theron) seems to be leading a confident life as the manager of an expensive restaurant, but it’s a mask covering promiscuity, self-mutilation, and suicidal impulses. Many years earlier, a young girl named Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence, The Bill Engvall Show) tries to piece together what led her mother (Kim Basinger) into an extramarital affair…even as Mariana herself falls into a dangerous relationship with the son of her mother’s lover. These threads and more are interwoven into an increasingly potent knot. The Burning Plain has some obvious dialogue and a few off-key notes, but despite that is a striking first effort by Guillermo Arriaga. Theron has always been best in roles that draw on anger and pain, like her astonishing performance in Monster; she goes bland when called on to portray nobility and happiness, but give her inner demons and her remarkable beauty roils with hidden emotions. The rest of the supporting cast–including John Corbett and Robin Tunney in small roles–turn in strong work. Like a boa constrictor, the movie slowly coils around you, then squeezes. –Bret Fetzer
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March 5, 2010
#1
Very sensual and seductive. Charlize Theron plays a mysterious woman with a past. I know Charlize mostly from action thrillers, but this is nothing like it. She is a multi-layered character, and apparently is battling some inner demons throughout the story, until the climax in the end. She is a beautiful lady, and she deserves such a beautifully photographed film, rather than the more mainstream movies she usually stars in. The cinematography in Burning Plain is extraordinary, and draws you in, like a master painting. Another interesting fact is that in addition to Hans Zimmer, they apparently got one of the greatest musical geniuses to do the score. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is the Van Gogh of music. He is classically trained, plays over one dozen instruments, and is considered by many the best guitarist of all time – including me! If you like the soundtrack of The Burning Plain, check out Omar’s rock band, The Mars Volta.
March 5, 2010
#2
BURNING PLAIN is far more than a successful movie, it is an art work on celluloid that holds the viewer’s attention and plays with the mind and emotions in a way that few other films have succeeded. Guillermo Arriaga has written another intelligent, cleverly paced walk through a maze that ultimately leads to finding all of the handsomely carved pieces of a puzzle that fit together so well it defies improvement. Known for other brilliant scripts (‘Amores Perros’, ’21 Grams’, ‘Babel’) this script he elects to direct with a cast of actors providing extraordinary performances. If this film doesn’t win in every category of the Oscars this year…..
The film has been given the tagline ‘Love heals. Love absolves. Love burns.’ The story, told in fragments of times past and times present, explores the lives of four women whose relationships are part of the secret the film reveals: Kim Bassinger is Gina, a married woman with children, including a perceptive and damaged daughter Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), who has survived the mutilation of breast cancer and finds desperately needed love in the arms of Nick (Joaquim de Almeida), a clandestine love affair that takes place in a deserted trailer house in the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM. Charlize Theron (Sylvia) is the manager of a classy restaurant in Oregon who soothes past bruises with numerous superficial liaisons, one being with her chef (John Corbett). Maria (Tessa la) is a young girl living in Mexico with her father Santiago (Danny Pino) and his co-worker and friend Carlos (José María Yazpik). Each of these four women – Gina, Sylvia, Mariana, and Maria – is complexly tied to the others. The match that ignites the story is a fire that ends the lives of Gina and Nick, and after this tragedy the children of the two lovers – Mariana and young Santiago (J.D. Pardo) – bond and provide further fodder for the development of the ending of the story. To say more would destroy the tense, beautifully hewn script’s conclusion. All is not as it seems until Arriaga pastes the pieces of the conundrum together.
The cast is first rate, with Bassinger and Theron offering some of their finest work to date. The cinematography (Robert Elswit, John Toll), the music score (Omar Rodriguez-Lopez), the careful editing (Craig Wood) and the casting (Debra Zane) all are first class. Once again Guillermo has proved his gifts as an artist – both as a writer and now as a director. One of the finest films of the year. Grady Harp, September 09
March 5, 2010
#3
BURNING PLAIN is far more than a successful movie, it is an art work on celluloid that holds the viewer’s attention and plays with the mind and emotions in a way that few other films have succeeded. Guillermo Arriaga has written another intelligent, cleverly paced walk through a maze that ultimately leads to finding all of the handsomely carved pieces of a puzzle that fit together so well it defies improvement. Known for other brilliant scripts (‘Amores Perros’, ’21 Grams’, ‘Babel’) this script he elects to direct with a cast of actors providing extraordinary performances. If this film doesn’t win in every category of the Oscars this year…..
The film has been given the tagline ‘Love heals. Love absolves. Love burns.’ The story, told in fragments of times past and times present, explores the lives of four women whose relationships are part of the secret the film reveals: Kim Bassinger is Gina, a married woman with children, including a perceptive and damaged daughter Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), who has survived the mutilation of breast cancer and finds desperately needed love in the arms of Nick (Joaquim de Almeida), a clandestine love affair that takes place in a deserted trailer house in the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM. Charlize Theron (Sylvia) is the manager of a classy restaurant in Oregon who soothes past bruises with numerous superficial liaisons, one being with her chef (John Corbett). Maria (Tessa la) is a young girl living in Mexico with her father Santiago (Danny Pino) and his co-worker and friend Carlos (José María Yazpik). Each of these four women – Gina, Sylvia, Mariana, and Maria – is complexly tied to the others. The match that ignites the story is a fire that ends the lives of Gina and Nick, and after this tragedy the children of the two lovers – Mariana and young Santiago (J.D. Pardo) – bond and provide further fodder for the development of the ending of the story. To say more would destroy the tense, beautifully hewn script’s conclusion. All is not as it seems until Arriaga pastes the pieces of the conundrum together.
The cast is first rate, with Bassinger and Theron offering some of their finest work to date. The cinematography (Robert Elswit, John Toll), the music score (Omar Rodriguez-Lopez), the careful editing (Craig Wood) and the casting (Debra Zane) all are first class. Once again Guillermo has proved his gifts as an artist – both as a writer and now as a director. One of the finest films of the year. Grady Harp, September 09
March 5, 2010
#4
Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s big-screen collaborations with director Alejandro González Iñárritu have produced a trio of highly accomplished films – Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel – that juxtaposed several storylines, all tied together by characters who were damaged souls in search of redemption and connection with one another. Although the two had a very public falling-out, Arriaga still appears to be strongly influenced by his former partner’s jumbled filmmaking style as he takes over the director’s chair with this 2009 drama. The chief problem, however, is that Arriaga doesn’t really show Iñárritu’s passion and audacity as he attempts to pull off the considerable demands of a non-linear narrative with conviction. Moreover, Arriaga the screenwriter lets down Arriaga the director with a script that ultimately feels too predictable and contrived despite strong performances from the cast.
There looks to be four separate stories at the outset, which eventually transitions into two. The first involves Sylvia, the manager of an upscale, seaside restaurant in Portland, an extremely pained woman who prefers casual sex followed by self-inflicted punishment. She is obviously anguished over something that motivates her erratic behavior. The second thread takes place in New Mexico near the Mexican border where Gina, an unhappily married mother of four, is carrying on an affair with a local man named Nick, also married with children. The complication here is that her daughter Mariana finds out about the affair and embarks on a relationship with Nick’s son Santiago. Meanwhile, in Mexico, a crop-duster plane crash-lands on an open field, as his twelve-year-old daughter Maria watches in horror.
Arriaga’s fractured approach works for a little while albeit in an emotionally draining, humorless way. However, when the moment of revelation arrives (and much too early), the plot unravels into a Lifetime TV-movie level of sanctimony obscured by the fiery explosion that gives the movie its name. Proving yet again that a beautiful woman can convincingly expose the torment of a soul under fire, Charlize Theron successfully makes the nihilistic Sylvia an ultimately sympathetic figure. Kim Basinger, looking entirely too stunning and wrinkle-free at 55 to be a K-Mart-shopping housewife, manages to get to the heart of a guilt-ridden woman, even as she shows Gina going through the predictable machinations of her illicit actions.
The stand-out performance, however, comes from Jennifer Lawrence, a Jewel look-alike, as the troubled teen Mariana, the dramatic pivot for the whole movie. Tessa Ia makes a strong impression as the pensive Maria, while the men barely make a ripple – John Corbett as a smitten sous-chef in Sylvia’s restaurant, Joaquim de Almeida as the passionate Nick, José María Yazpik as the go-between Carlos, and Danny Pino as the pilot. The one exception is J.D. Pardo who plays Santiago as the impetuous Romeo to Lawrence’s Juliet. Robin Tunney shows up in a smallish role as Sylvia’s one true friend. Robert Elswit and John Toll share cinematography responsibilities here, and they do an excellent job capturing all the locales. At the end of the movie, I couldn’t help thinking that Arriaga’s yin was fundamentally missing Iñárritu’s yang.
March 5, 2010
#5
The Burning Plain is an outstanding crime-drama film …it is well directed and acted also..the performances of two important casts, Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger are really outstanding.. slow going but extremely striking…must see..