The Burning Plain

Dir Guillermo Arriaga, w/ Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger. Special Presentations. 111 min.

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BY Adam Nayman   September 07, 2008 02:09

The programme note for The Burning Plain refers to writer-director Guillermo Arriaga as a “one-man revolution in cinematic storytelling.” If that’s the case, you can start the revolution without me. The Babel screenwriter’s directorial debut (his first after a much publicized creative divorce from Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu) is just more overwrought puzzle-box melodrama, with seemingly unrelated narratives in Oregon, Texas and Mexico laboriously coalescing into what might be termed Art House Telemundo. It’s hard to imagine at this point that audiences aren’t wise to Arriaga’s connect-the-dots strategies, and as the story and characters are ludicrous — Charlize Theron toplines as a sexually masochistic cutter still reeling from all manner of adolescent trauma — the tricks seem like just so much faux-elegant obfuscation. Move along, folks: nothing to see here. 

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