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Burning Plain (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Magnolia Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (30th January 2010). |
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The Film
 Anyone who knows me or has read my reviews here on DVDcompare know that I’m not the biggest fan of the straight drama. Movies that are just about people and the lives they lead are usually uninteresting to me. Of course there are exceptions ("Mad Men" (2007-Present), "The Wire" (2002-2008), anything by P.T. Anderson), but if there isn’t some sort of interesting turn to a film, like magicians, aliens, masked killers, and so on and so on, I tend to lose interest. I know that I’ll probably never get a voting-membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with this attitude, but it’s just the way I am. It is because of this that I usually dread watching a movie like "The Burning Plain." It has two famous actresses and the plot blurb on the back would lead me to believe it is about how people connect... or something. Not my cup of tea. Or so I thought. I have to admit that "The Burning Plain," written and directed by Guillermo Arriaga, was a pleasant surprise. "The Burning Plain" unravels its story in the same fashion as "21 Grams" (2003) and "Babel" (2006), both penned by Arriaga. We have seemingly disjointed stories and time jumps, and by the end of the film you get a better picture as to how everything connects. I’m happy to say that "The Burning Plain" falls more into the category of "21 Grams," a movie I loved, rather than "Babel," a film I didn’t care for. The film begins with Sylvia (Charlize Theron) waking up after a one night stand. She goes to work at a restaurant she seems to be running. Cut to a family morning the loss of their father, only to be berated by another family as they exit the cemetery. Cut to a mother (Kim Basinger) meeting up with her lover (Joaquim de Almeida), whose funeral we witnessed earlier. Cut to a man (Danny Pino) crashes his dust cropping plane and goes to the hospital. While at first I had no idea how all of these stories would connect, I was worried that the connections would be arbitrary and half assed, such as I felt they were in "Babel." However, how they are connected took my by surprise and made me feel for the characters of the movie in ways I wasn’t ready to when I began. Aside from how the movie came together, everything else about it is average to above-average. Arriaga does a good job of getting some pretty decent shots, and I was thankful that he didn’t attempt to mimic the style of Alejandro González Iñárritu, whom directed his two previous scripts. The acting was pretty solid throughout, and had a pretty decent script to work with. There were a few missteps that effected the flow of the movie that threw me off, including scenes where two characters deliberately burn themselves with lighters and sleep with each other in their dead parents clothes (all of which is not portrayed as completely creepy). Also, there is a complete absence of any attempt to explore why Basinger's character was cheating on her husband, played by the fantastic Brett Cullen. In a film that tries so hard to examine human relationships, I was disappointed Cullen was wasted in the part of “bad-dad who is bad for some reason”. Overall, "The Burning Plain" kept my attention for all 107 minutes of its running time. I went in kicking and screaming and came out the other side pleasantly surprised. This film isn’t the sort of thing I have any sort of desire to hold near to me or to watch repeatedly, but it certainly is the sort of film I can recommend to other people who enjoyed Arriaga's previous works.
Video
"The Burning Plain" is presented in high-definition 1080p 24/fps in a widescreen 2.40:1 transfer mastered in VC-1 compression, and the results are mixed. A large portion of the film takes place in the deserts of New Mexico, and it is here that the film struggles to translate the bright and yellow tones. Whenever a scene is especially bright, there is a large amount of grain spamming the screen. This is disappointing in that these are potentially the most interesting scenes of the movie, both in terms of the narrative and visuals. However, when we follow Theron’s story, we get the blue scale of the North West, and the picture is clear as rain. However, this also happens to be the most visually uninteresting local of the movie. This is a frustrating although adequate transfer to say the least.
Audio
"The Burning Plain" is offered in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, and for a drama, this film showed up in terms of sound. There are no car crashes or guns firing to exploit my surround sound system as a blu ray may typically, but the film shines in the more calm moments, in which two character build a fire in the desert of New Mexico. Every cricket, every bird, and every gust of wind is placed perfectly to really immerse the viewer. Also, in the few moments of action that there are (an explosion and a plane crash), the sound really kicks it. An overall impressive audio offering. Subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
"The Burning Plain" includes a few long extras, including a making-of featurette, an examination of the film’s score featurette, a promo featurette, some preview bonus trailers, bookmarks and BD-Live access. These are examined further below: First up we have "The Making of The Burning Plain" featurette, which runs for 43 minutes and 27 seconds. Here, seemingly every corner of the film’s production is examined, ranging from the origins of the movie’s story to the actual production. Also, each major player of the film is focused on, and offers an explanation of why their job is so important to the process. Overall, this was a decently interesting look into the journey a movie takes from beginning to end, but doesn’t offer anything new in way of insight into the process of it all. If you’ve seen a making-of featurette at this length before, I doubt you’ll be seeing anything new here. Also included is "The Music of The Burning Plain" featurette, which runs for 15 minutes and 33 seconds. Here we get to see director Arriaga speaking with the film’s composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. I didn’t feel it was entirely necessary to explore the film’s music in this much depth, but maybe that’s because I found the score to be pretty boring. I felt as thought his feature played up how influential the score was to the film, especially because the movie’s few hokey parts were made so mainly because of the "Friday Night Lights" (2004) inspired tunes. However, showing the director and composer sit down together and watch the movie, explaining what sort of music should be played in each scene, is interesting enough. Also included is "HDNet: A Look at The Burning Plain" promo featurette, which runs for 4 minutes and 46 seconds. Here, we are offered a preview of the movie that interviews the crew trying to sell the movie. This is really just a sort of trailer-meets-infomercial and you’re not really getting anything new here. The disc also includes a few start-up bonus trailers, and they are for: - "Serious Moonlight" which runs for 2 minutes and 18 seconds. - "Ong Bak 2" which runs for 1 minute and 40 seconds. - "Red Cliff" which runs for 2 minutes and 50 seconds. - "Bronson" which runs for 2 minutes and 50 seconds. - "HDNet Movies" spot which runs for 1 minute and 2 seconds. Lastly we have a bookmark feature and BD-Live access.
Overall
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