The Burning Plain

September. 18,2009      R
Rating:
6.7
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Trailer Synopsis Cast

A trailer is burning in the middle of a plain. The bodies of two adulterous lovers are found. Scenes from both families, before and after the dramatic events, suggest an unusual connection between them. But what is their secret?

Charlize Theron as  Sylvia / Mariana
Kim Basinger as  Gina
Jennifer Lawrence as  Young Mariana
Joaquim de Almeida as  Nick Martinez
John Corbett as  John
Robin Tunney as  Laura
Fernanda Romero as  Sophie
Brett Cullen as  Robert
Danny Pino as  Santiago Martinez
José María Yázpik as  Carlos Alarid

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Reviews

TinsHeadline
2009/09/18

Touches You

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SunnyHello
2009/09/19

Nice effects though.

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Merolliv
2009/09/20

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

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Allison Davies
2009/09/21

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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David_Brown
2009/09/22

This is a film with three Oscar winners (Basinger, Theron, and Lawrence), and none of them are any good (both in character (particularly Lawrence who abandoned her baby of two days), nor in acting). I could watch Basinger in anything and like it (except "Cool World"), because I am a fan of hers, and there is nothing boring about her, but here she is essentially lame. The only one who is worth watching is Tessa La (Maria), the daughter of Lawrence who grows up to be Theron (who seems to sleep around why every guy she meet to the point of being a nymphomaniac). What is pretty pathetic, is she is 12 and is the closest thing to be an adult (and this is not a kids film). Spoilers ahead: At the end of the film, she is the one who left Mexico to come to the US, and find her mom, after her dad had a crop dusting accident, and reunited the family. I give it two stars only for her.. Otherwise, it would be a total waste.

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OJT
2009/09/23

There's great stuff in this film by Guillermo Arriaga, which also was behind Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel, which is all good. This is also very interesting, but maybe Arriaga here goes a bit lost in his own storytelling? It's possible to love the excitement and dramatics of loose cannons, but there's maybe a couple to many out here.This film will be loved by many, others will be turned off by the edited storyline, the slow pace, the strange and often appalling behavior of otherwise neat people. This is also things which makes other interested. But this has been done better, without the bad behavior. It's real enough, the exaggerations makes it less believable. There's simply not that many insane people in a small place like this, doing the wrong and right things the way they are here.Good acting, but still some annoying ways of behavior. Great scenery though bleak use of nature, a lingering excitement though not fulfillment, great ideas though purely executed. Though could have been amazing, like f.e. The Dead Girl, but is just a good try. A nice try in a everyday environment, but somehow it's difficult in accepting the way people act when in different situations. It all gets a bit to desperate.It's not difficult to follow, though Arriaga has made his best in trying to confuse and lose the audience on the way. But I feel that the film is lost in a try to make this film more important, serious and real than necessary, and therefore loses some of its way. Love and life is difficult, and often messy, but the filmmaking hasn't got to enhance that. Kudos for good idea, but next time make someone see it over!

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cesetevi
2009/09/24

a very strong story.at the beginning I think there's two separate story line.when Sylvia calls the lying man Santiago everything falls into its place.There is something I find not plausible.when Mariana lets pipe loose what does she think will happen? obviously it's gonna blow entire trailer.this aside, movie tells a woman's life who is gonna have to face his past which she tries to escape all her life.she kills her mother and her lover.she keeps this secret herself and tries to cope with this by sleeping every man she meets which is a way of hiding her guilt.she also tries to share this guilt by burning his hand with her mother's lover son.Just to make her history to present a sign of love.however it is in reality not a love, a guilt.she tries to hurt himself escaping being loved by a man.she can't bear this pain and leaves his baby with his father behind.she maybe treats her baby a product of this guilt.when she learns her daughter had a scar when she was 3 years old she later asks her forgiveness,feeling that guilt again.this movie is full of drama.it takes you from a woman's life who had breast cancer to another woman's life who had killed her own mother just to punish.Afterwards she tries to punish herself.movie ends without a resolution.I wonder whether she's gonna tell him how she killed her own mother and his father? the father of her daughter? even her daughter?

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simona gianotti
2009/09/25

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.

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