SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

lor_ In cinema there are two genres that emphasize the morbid: pornography and horror films. Body parts are the chief subject matter and content of both, though it is only in recent decades that horror has moved from psychological to its current gross-out and shock status.Writer turned director Guillermo Arriaga takes the morbid route for a dramatic film "The Burning Plain", and merely displays a complete lack of feeling for cinema. Each scene is presented in the dull "one thing after another" representation of life that master directors like Hitchcock abhorred. Of course a great stylist like Ozu or Angelopoulos can get away with this approach, but Arriaga makes the experience dull indeed with his lack of technique.Lack of suspense is the other damning fault of the film. Hitchcock often stressed the need to impart enough information as a storyteller in order that the viewer could share in the anticipation and enjoyment of key revelations to come, whereas novice Arriaga falls into the rookie trap of surprise. This is akin to bad horror films, where even if there are suspenseful scenes of dread and fear, the payoff or climax of a sequence is relegated to gimmick - the equivalent of sneaking up and shouting "boo" at the viewer like clockwork every few reels. Modern audiences equate that scare tactic to the horror film being a good one. Here, we finally, tortuously, get the contrived threads of the director's inside-out plot tied up ever so neatly -meant as a thrill for the mind, but a massive groaner for me. Better leave things enigmatic, but this is a man who has sold his soul to the Chaos Theory school of bad filmmaking.Parting shot: another Adult Cinema gimmick is talking the actresses into doing this or that sex act (anal, interracial and gang-bang currently being the marketable commodities), to ensure the box office success of the product. For Arriaga, we have the modern phony-baloney equivalent of preying on actresses who have fallen for that whole indie myth of "giving one's all just for art". So the superstar sex symbol icons like Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron, with young Jennifer Lawrence warming up in the bullpen to surpass them in future career, are cajoled into "naughty" bits they would balk at in a big-budget studio assignment, probably feeling insulted. But for this crappy project - give it your all, scars being the fetish of the day.

paul2001sw-1 Guillermo Arriaga's film 'The Burning Plain' is a clever, multi-layered story of the intersecting lives of four female protagonists. It's well acted and filmed, and the background score is classy; but it's not quite great. Firstly, the device of telling each story in fragments, and not in chronological order, doesn't quite deliver the pay-off one might hope for: the final explanation is, perhaps, nothing other than what one might have expected. And secondly, perhaps its this very device which explains why the film isn't quite as emotionally involving as one might expect for a movie whose individual scenes are so well executed. I still enjoyed it, and it's a cut above most mainstream fare; but it never completely transcends its schema.

jameswilliams784 This is a strange movie. If your a fan of the Babel or other work by Guillermo Arriaga, then you will be satisfied with this movie. If your a fan of Charlise Theron then you be satisfied with this movie. If your looking for a gripping drama about how a tragedy affects the lives of different people you will be satisfied. However, if you looking for a good intense drama, this movie will leave you unsatisfied unless you can get over the very disjointed beginning and follow the movie to the end. I think you have to be familiar with Arriaga's films to really like this movie. He weaves stories together without any thought of a time line and it can make a movie seem very strange. However, if you will follow this movie to the end, it is a good movie. The Acting especially by Theron is outstanding. Give this movie a chance and its enjoyable. Not a masterpiece, but enjoyable.

simona gianotti I saw this movie for the first time on TV last night: it was one of those movies that do not let you go to sleep with a light heart. It's about a deep, lacerating human drama, involving more generations, narrated through continuous going back and forward. Not difficult to follow, however, since there's a kind of subtle, subterranean emotional line, uniting all characters, places, vicissitudes, as to make the viewer almost naturally and instinctively able to get in touch with the story. And the director chose to pass such an emotional impact in a gentle and unobtrusive way, with a sense of unreal quietness, pervading the whole movie, although hiding a sense of anguish. Evident it is that in such movies great responsibility is given to the cast: in "The burning plain", the whole cast, especially the female interpreters, deliver very good and intense performances. Charlize Theron gets to convey a kind of suffocated pain and unbearable sense of guilt in a superb way. Kim Basinger offers touching and sincere acting, but also the younger female cast show credibility and intensity in their difficult roles.