I’ve already said how high my hopes are for “The Burning Plain,” the directorial debut from one of the most interesting screenwriters in the business, Guillermo Arriaga. Now the reviews are trickling in, and they’re — predictably — mixed.
Variety, as is often the case these days, provides the major buzzkill, dismissing it as “an elaborate writing exercise” (like that’s a bad thing) with “little to become engaged with.” Happily, Lee Marshall at Variety’s UK equivalent, Screen International, couldn’t disagree more:
A powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also much cleaner, in dramatic focus and emotional thrust, than the three films Arriaga penned for Inarritu … A sombre story about an unforgivable act and its cross-generational fallout is here leavened by a greater dose of hope and redemption than Arriaga has yet allowed himself, and the games The Burning Plain plays with its audience are amply justified by the emotional punch of the film’s denouement.