The Burning Plain

The directorial debut of 21 Grams screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, The Burning Plain employs an expectedly fractured narrative to tell the stories of several characters – including Charlize Theron’s Sylvia, Jennifer Lawrence’s Marina, and Kim Basinger’s Gina. There’s little doubt that although the film’s various threads initially come off as kind of random and insignificant, the viewer is certainly more than willing to indulge the filmmaker up to a certain point – after which, however, it’s hard to deny that the stagnant vibe does start to become a little oppressive. That the film generally remains watchable even through its more overtly plodding stretches is due almost entirely to the stellar work of the various actors, with Theron delivering an especially strong and affecting performance that proves instrumental in the movie’s mild success. The increasingly melodramatic nature of some of these stories doesn’t entirely help matters, and it’s also worth noting that Arriaga tips his hat just a little too early in terms of some of the film’s supposed surprises. But it’s ultimately impossible to deny that, overlooking the film’s time-shifting structure, The Burning Plain possesses the feel of a fairly standard drama, which would be fine for a run-of-the-mill debuting filmmaker but is certainly a disappointment coming from Arriaga (ie the emotional resonance of Babel and 21 Grams is almost completely absent here).

**1/2 out of ****