From Variety:
Many of the weaknesses and few of the strengths of Guillermo Arriaga as a scripter are evident in his directing debut, "The Burning Plain." Multicharacter head-scratcher, yo-yoing between New Mexico and Oregon, and back and forth in time, doesn't finally reveal much beneath the emperor's clothes to repay viewers' concentration during the first half. Despite an OK-to-good cast led by Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, plus a handsome tech package, this remains an elaborate writing exercise with few emotional hooks. Upscale auds, drawn by Arriaga's name, may be curious.Full review.
4 comments:
The 20 minutes screening of TCCOBB from Jeffrey Wells site (Friends who saw it."
"My friends had one unqualified positive reaction, which was to the performance by Taraji P. Henson as Brad Pitt's adoptive mother. But beyond that, the Button footage felt vaguely underwhelming, they said.
It just wasn't particularly exciting or engrossing, one explained. Excellent visual effects (old Pitt as a baby, etc.) and fine cinematography but with a kind of enervated, waiting-for-something-to-happen quality. The footage showed portions of the entire film, the other friend said, but in a way that kept you from getting into it with cuts coming too abruptly. And so people were kind of...whatever, grunting and muttering on the way out."
I dislike Arriaga. I really like Three Burials, though, so when I saw that I started watching all his films, and I didn't like a single one.
Geoffrey McNab from the The Independent has this to say
An ensemble drama which is bound to be seen everywhere is Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain, starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger. Some critics were equivocal about a film which – like everything else Arriaga scripts – tells its story from multiple viewpoints and features constant shifts in time and location. To me, though, this was magnificent film-making – leaner and less flashy than 21 Grams and Babel and more powerful as a result. The narrative, hinging on infidelity and family feuding, may seem soap operatic but Arriaga tackles his material in a raw, elemental fashion as if it were a full-blown Greek tragedy.
Theron – who also produced – gives one of her best performances as an alienated woman with a string of lovers. She works as a manager in an upmarket restaurant in Oregon. Only very slowly do we begin to link her story with that of Basinger, the middle-aged mom having an illicit affair with a Mexican that tears her family apart.
Arriaga is clearly an actor's director. He allows Theron, Basinger and the younger cast members, including the brilliant newcomer Jennifer Lawrence, to offer far deeper and more subtle characterisations than are found in most Hollywood movies about broken families.
The only other feature I saw which matched the raw voltage of The Burning Plain was the Brazilian movie Birdwatchers by Marco Bechis. It is the story of the clash between wealthy, pampered farmers in Brazil with the natives (the Guarani-Kaiowa) whose land they have appropriated. Suicide and alcoholism are rife among the natives, whose only source of income is working in dead-end jobs on the sugar plantations.
He also rates as one of his top five movies
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