Burning

A capsule review written for The Big Issue #650 (26 November 2021).

Burning (Eva Orner, 2021)
★★½

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that until the pandemic reduced all else to a footnote, the world had watched in horror as Australia suffered through one of the worst bushfire seasons in its history. In her new documentary Burning, director Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side, Chasing Asylum) offers a timely reminder of the Black Summer of 2019–20, and of a government that was gifted a distraction from its loathsome response to the tragedy and to the climate change that fuelled it. Orner adopts a conventional journalistic approach, cutting between talking heads, archival materials and footage of the devastation taken from the ground and from above. There’s little here that’s new, but what the film lacks in complexity it makes up for in its directness and sincerity of purpose. Just as we need to be confronted by the apocalyptic imagery – of inflamed skies, scorched wildlife and blackened landscapes – conversationist Tim Flannery’s parting assurance that the climate situation can still be saved are words we sorely need to hear, and believe.