A film we’ve been greatly anticipating and one that’s about to hit the Toronto Film Festival is the directorial feature film debut of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, called “The Burning Plain.”
The every things-always-connected screenwriter behind, “Amores Perros” (2000), “21 Grams” (2003), and “Babel,” (2006), Arriaga is main figure in the Mexican film renaissance in recent years (which includes Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and his now estranged film partner, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who directed the aforementioned every things-always-connected trifecta).
Well, we just got word that composing the score for “The Burning Plain,” which stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, is Hans Zimmer and his partner this time (he’s had a few lately) is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez from the Latin, psych-rockers The Mars Volta, which makes sense given then Mexican flavor Arriaga has in all his films. We can totally hear some screeching, rather noise-flaring guitars and Pink Floyd-esque feedback being used in tandem with Zimmer’s more traditional orchestral film scores.
The film’s multi-part story strands (naturally) are woven together to chronicle “very intense love stories here that take place in different places and times,” Arriaga told Variety in July of last year. Oh yeah, there’s a lot of forgiveness and redemption thrown in to boot (but of course).
Other songs included in the film include tracks by Madeleine Peyroux, Julianna Raye, Vienna Teng, Flaco Jimenez, Mando Lopez Y Los Muchachos.
Zimmer’s been on a collaborating tear of lately working with the Wu-Tang’s RZA, Black Eyed Peas’ Will. I. AM, and incorporating rock and atonal industrial sounds in his work (“The Dark Knight”) so it’s no wonder he’s working with Rodriguez from the loud and fierce prog-rockers in the Volta.
Lopez previously scored Jorge Hernandez Aldana’s “El Bufalo De La Noche,” in 2007, another film written by Arriaga.