Too many critics have associated this startling work by a 19-year-old NYU film student, Phillip Youmans, with the films of Terrence Malick. But we can do better than that. If we really think about these brutally beautiful images of rural black life in the South, we find a much closer association with the films of the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. His masterpiece Silent Light exists in the same melancholy universe as Youmans’s Burning Cane, which, among others things, has a great performance by Hollywood star Wendell Pierce. He plays a rural pastor who, like the other main characters, has a soul burdened by those heavy, heavy blues.
Burning Cane screens this evening and tomorrow afternoon at the 45th Seattle International Film Festival. For a breakdown of what’s showing these last few days of SIFF (which closes on Sunday night), visit The Stranger’s SIFF site.
