Venice. The Burning Plain.

The first round of reviews is almost perfectly split: a rave and a pan from the trades and a rave and a pan from the British papers.

"His much-publicised falling out with director Alejandro González Iñárritu seems to have done Guillermo Arriaga the world of good," writes Lee Marshall in Screen Daily. "The Burning Plain, which the Mexican writer directed from his own script, is a powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also much cleaner, in dramatic focus and emotional thrust, than the three films Arriaga penned for Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel)."

Updated through 9/5.

"Multicharacter head-scratcher, yo-yoing between New Mexico and Oregon, and back and forth in time, doesn't finally reveal much beneath the emperor's clothes to repay viewers' concentration during the first half," writes Derek Elley in Variety. "Despite an OK-to-good cast led by Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, plus a handsome tech package, this remains an elaborate writing exercise with few emotional hooks."

"It isn't too early to suggest this film's the one to beat," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten. "Arriaga pulls together the strands of his narrative with great expertise. His job is made easier by great performances from three actresses: Theron and Basinger, who both look like racing certs for next year's awards season, and Jennifer Lawrence as Basinger's teenage daughter."

"It was absorbing in a soap-ish sort of way, but pretty much devoid of the high-powered visuals Arriaga's one-time collaborator, Alejandro González Iñárritu, brought to the party," writes Andrew Pulver in the Guardian, where Mark Brown looks back on the feud between the two Mexican filmmakers.

Earlier: Ronald Bergan.

Update, 8/31: "Some of the characters appear twice, in their younger and older versions, but Arriaga seems to hide this fact on several levels," notes Boyd van Hoeij in the Auteurs' Notebook: "there are no clear temporal markers in the visuals or the music, and one of the main characters uses a different name as an adult (the fact that different actors are used for the different ages only accentuates this divide). The effect is one of initial confusion more than mystery, and when it slowly becomes clear how everything fits together, it feels like a big reveal that takes away dramatic weight and momentum from the final, explosive explanation of the film’s very first scenes. In fact, the real reveal is almost like an afterthought, and, in hindsight, a not very clearly motivated one at that."

Update, 9/1: "One can hardly begrudge writers looking to protect the integrity of their scripts," writes Shane Danielsen at indieWIRE. "It's just a pity that, in this case, the result was so perfunctory."

Update, 9/5: "It's a solid film, less dependent on authorial whim than Arriaga's earlier scripts, and with the heat of the American West so palpable, it gives full meaning to the movie's title," writes Time's Richard Corliss.

Posted by dwhudson at August 30, 2008 12:44 PM