When watching The Burning Season, one thinks of the iconic line spluttered by Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain: ‘I wish I knew how to quit you!’ Such is the havoc caused by the illicit affair between two people bound by a tragic secret in this compelling and precise relationship drama. Told in reverse over a period of seven years, it takes us from revelation to genesis in fascinating ways.
We meet JB (Jonas Chernick) at his wedding. What should be a happy occasion becomes a horrifying display of self-sabotage as the appearance of Alana (Sara Canning) sends him on a coke-fuelled spiral and the subsequent confession of their affair. The narrative then cuts back year upon year like the layers of an onion, and we begin to learn the roots of their entanglement, and the moment from their past that clings to them like rot.
Coming across like Irreversible with only the emotional brutality, Chernick and cowriter Diana Frances nail an ambitious narrative, dropping breadcrumbs throughout to the idyllically remote gingerbread house that is the scene of all their trauma. What the structure sacrifices in terms of the destination of their relationship, it more than makes up for in sheer doom-laden weight. This is one of the more oppressive relationship dramas you will see – and a nuanced examination of the addictiveness of one’s own pain.
As played by Chernick and a superb Canning, JB and Alana are two people who on some level don’t want to alleviate or absolve themselves, which is why they’ve kept an absolute sewn-mouth silence. Like addicts, they set arbitrary rules to justify their lapses, and their trysts are furious, flailing affairs of fleeting highs and crushing regrets.
The backward narrative does constrain the storytelling to a degree, and it’s not overly tricky to ascertain the pair’s big secret. Even before the last act ‘prologue’ with Natalie Jane and Christian Meer ably deputising as the teenage incarnations of Alana and JB, there are enough clues throughout to deduce what’s happened. The way the mechanics of the narrative are utilised are hugely affecting however,and it’s quietly devastating to watch several lives – most of them blameless – get sucked into the implosion of the relationship, the story folding in on itself to a fixed point like the final dot left onscreen on a cathode ray tube TV.
The Burning Season is a rewarding and ambitious drama, deftly handled by director Sean Garrity and played to the hilt by all involved. It’s all the more impressive for containing so much in its streamlined 90 minutes.
Screened as part of Glasgow International Film Festival 2024