The Burning Plain: Critic Reviews

The scenery (prettily captured by There Will Be Blood cinematographer Robert Elswit) is littered with heavy symbolism (fire! rain! dead birds!); the performances are merely heavy.

The elliptical structure of the narrative can't cover up its overheated, half-baked banality.

The Burning Plain marks Arriaga's behind-the-camera debut, and his obviousness is staggering.

Possibly the stories fit too neatly. If so, it's hardly a fatal flaw.

Told chronologically, it might have accumulated considerable power. Told as a labyrinthine tangle of intercut timelines and locations, it is a frustrating exercise in self-indulgence by writer-director Guillermo Arriaga.

The result is confusion, not catharsis.

A classic melodrama about thwarted desire, failed relationships, and unrealized dreams, Plain delivers solid turns from a stellar cast.

The film is strikingly photographed and intensely acted, but the tone is overwrought melodrama.

It's serious stuff, intended for serious movie people. The only problem is, serious movie people have already been there, done that.

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.

That fractured structure worked well for Arriaga in his scripts for other directors. Here the characters aren't compelling enough to ask viewers to give their brains a workout to determine exactly what's going on.

If Arriaga had allowed us to spend more time with the key characters in this extended tragedy, or had spent some time punching up the plot, The Burning Plain might have had a chance.

Throw in enough symbolism to choke an English-lit major and you have a film challenge that too often feels like a chore.

The burning is mostly on the plain, not in this labyrinthine story.

Deep-seated emotional problems are examined in a complex movie that, as ever with Arriaga, refuses to fit into a straightforward narrative.

Knowing ... that it's a 20-year old story, one can only conclude the idea behind the film would have been best left unfilmed, an unfinished step toward greater things.

Babel director shows his hand too soon

When so many cinema releases are instantly forgettable, The Burning Plain clings to the memory...

A melancholy but also profoundly uplifting film by the talented Guillermo Arriaga. Storytelling is an artform and Arriaga is a master

I think Ariaga needs to find another structuring device: this is way too complex, and Arriaga is so busy time-shifting that it takes quite a while to figure out who the characters are, and the way their relationships come together.

It's a hard film to love, partly because of its air of deadly seriousness.

Even if the film is a little contrived, it's quite a haunting experience...

Once it all clicks into place and viewers are left to engage with the characters, the heavy misery and self-importance of the piece becomes overwhelming.