Guillermo Arriaga
The Burning Plain

The debut work of Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, already a screenwriter for director Inarritu, for whom he wrote the scripts for "21 Grams" and "Babel", directs his first film, this "The Burning Plain", released in theaters in November 2008.

In space-time situations separated from each other, Sylvia (Charlize Theron), Gina (Kim Basinger), and Marianna (Jennifer Lawrence) face their problems, both old and new. Sylvia is an attractive woman who continuously has sex, changing "partners" each time. Gina is a mother living with a complex family issue and still shaken by breast cancer. Marianna is a girl who falls in love with Santiago, both orphans due to a fire. She lost her mother, he his father.

Arriaga, naturally also the screenwriter of the film, directs this "The Burning Plain" favoring a velvety atmosphere that frames the entire work. A complex and delicate work that focuses on themes common to everyone in one way or another. Lost and then found loves, pain and loneliness, family quarrels, friendships.

In a continuous intertwining of mostly dramatic events, the film progresses in bursts due to evident filmic voids. This slow and "static" pace ends up revealing too soon how things went. In fact, the three stories narrated are all connected, but this time it's the characters themselves that expand while the storyline remains the same.

"The burning plain" proves difficult to comment on given the abundance of themes. What stands out the most is the responsibility that often lacks from parents towards their children. The children, for their part, try in every way to shoulder family difficulties, trying to escape from everything, sometimes succeeding, other times not...

Guillermo Arriaga has made a film in an immense flashback where various stories converge, but where the starting point does not change, while the characters evolve. The despair and difficulties are due to themselves. Mistakes are paid for, and at a high price. The film highlights the weight of this, but it does not hit the mark despite the excellent performances of the three protagonists. Creating a deliberately complex film ended up generating an underlying problem: making everything more appealing to the general public, who will be faced with a work that is certainly valid but equally pompous and "heavy".