The Burning – Review by C.K. MacNamara

Director: Pablo Fendrik

Starring: Gael García, Alice Braga, Claudio Tolcachir, Julián Tello

Written more as a fan adaptation than original concept, Pablo Fendrik’s The Burning achieves the oh-so delicate balancing act of nostalgia hidden under the veneer of an originality. The film pays homage to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns in the same way the modern fantasy genre “pays homage” to Tolkien; that is to say changing the setting slightly.

Our mysterious ‘Man with No Name’ protagonist wanders in from the wilderness to defend the downtrodden from unscrupulous villains, who want to bully the local farmers off their land. In these days of needlessly convoluted screenplays, how refreshing to have this simplicity – the bad guys are here to pillage and burn and twirl their moustaches and the good guy is here to stop them.

The oppressive jungle setting adds a crucially needed sense of tension to an otherwise all too recognizable story, though this focus on atmosphere makes the films pacing slow to the point of anaemic. Every plot milestone is punctuated with 10 minutes of brooding silence and luscious shots of the rainforest.

As a result the build up to every gunfight is so slow that what would otherwise be a dull action scene seems like the end of the world to the starved viewer, and when the action does happen, the viscerally satisfying violence rattles the viewer with every gunshot.

The original elements of the film are sadly its weakest points, as a bizarre ‘guardian of the jungle’ spirituality subplot is shoehorned into the already crowded frame for the sake of a moral message. Having a high noon showdown in the claustrophobic jungle suddenly interrupted by the protagonist’s spirit animal is jarring to say the least.

Overall this is a simple, easily digestible nostalgia fest by a director who knows his subject matter intimately, dressed up with enough threadbare originality to convince the viewer this isn’t something they’ve all seen before. Though somewhat spoiled by a tacked on moral message, there is so much sincerity and genuine love of the genre from Fendrik that this modern eco-western manages the nostalgia-originality feat of having its cake and eating it too.