The Burning (El Ardor) is an Argentinean film that has made it to the UK this year, following the impressive Jauja and the superb Wild Tales. The worthy environmental theme (deforestation), hints at magic realism, atmospheric jungle setting and Mexico’s most popular export Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries), promises a film of that calibre. Unfortunately, Pablo Fendrik’s attempt at a Western in the jungle, packs in all the clichés without giving us anything new. The tone is insufferably self-reverential, the spiritualism heavy-handed and the villains are caricatures
Falling somewhere between Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, the Mel Gibson directed Apocalypto, and John Ford’s the Searchers, a mysterious stranger, Kai (Bernal), whose life has been destroyed by greedy loggers, shows up at a farm that is being threatened by the same land hungry thugs. In the prologue, we are told about ancient rituals used to ward off danger and then we are told that, ‘today, those who work the soil still resort to those rituals when a threat is near.’
This sets the stage for the supernatural element or magic realism that surfaces in the form of tiger on the prowl. This tiger and the stranger, Kai, are not enemies, but allies in their determination to ward off danger to their environment.
In an early scene we see the gruesome remains of a woman who has been mauled by a tiger. We gather from the conversation of three thugs that they had kidnapped her, leaving her tied to a tree where the tiger finished her off. We soon see how the thugs intimidate small landholders, forcing them to sign over their land to the logging company. Their next stop is a small farm where Kai has just arrived to offer his assistance. When the farmer refuses to sign over his land, he is brutally killed while the hired hand is left for dead. Kai has remained inside with the farmer’s daughter (Alice Varga), but on seeing her father murdered, she leaps out and is carried off by the men.
Kai emerges to find the farm hand still breathing. He concocts a potion to heal the man before running off barefoot through the jungle to save Vania in what must be Fendrik’s nod to the Searchers. Just why the heinous thugs do not rape her remains a mystery but we do learn that she will be cooking for them.
For the remainder of the film Kai demonstrates his knowledge of the land and how to use natural resources and primitive weapons when one is outnumbered. In Pale Rider, the stranger demonstrates that being outnumbered is not a disadvantage when you apply the right strategy: an element of surprise, marksmanship and careful planning. As in Pale Rider there is a love story, but we know, as does Vania, that the mysterious stranger must move on.
The spiritual element is somewhat clumsily handled, and the thugs seem to recover almost instantly after Kai drives a spear through the leg of one and maims another in an animal trap. But the real problem is the casting of Bernal as the action hero. He is a good actor and has a certain charisma, but is all wrong for this role. It is not just his small stature, but his inability to use his face to express his feelings and to convince us that he can take out a small army of armed men. Nonetheless, when, at the end, Kai predicts that other men will be returning, he is speaking sincerely about a very serious problem facing our disappearing jungle habitats.
Joyce Glasser – MT film reviewer
