Summary
It didn’t quite work because it felt a bit repetitive in sending the poems back and forth. It’s a generic love story with no emotional connection to the characters.
We review the Netflix film Burning Patience, which does not contain spoilers.
What do we truly know about love? We know that it comes in all different forms, and we know that people have different ways of showing their affection. Sometimes people use lyrics or poems to express their feelings, and that’s what Burning Patience explores. Mario is a young fisherman who dreams of becoming a poet. He gets a job as the postman to Pablo Neruda when the legendary writer moves there after being exiled from Chile, as per the synopsis on IMDB.
While he works for Neruda and becomes his companion, he learns the ways of a poet. Neruda explains to him how to use metaphors romantically, and Mario picks up quickly. There is a young girl in town named Beatriz who he falls in love with but doesn’t have the first clue as to how to even approach her.
He starts writing her poems and sends them to the local radio station so she could hear them because her mother, Elba, is completely against the two of them getting together. Director Rodrigo Sepúlveda shows the Chilean culture and pays close attention to how the townspeople treat creatives.
Some worship the ground they walk on because they have a way with words, and others don’t understand how they make a living.
The way he brought Beatriz and Mario together through the radio was probably the most unique aspect of this film.
They would use metaphors that became locations for them to meet at. No one but them knew the codenames they used or how meaningful the words were. The editing between everyone reading their poems to each other, as it traveled from one person to the next because of their distance, showed the lengths that lovers go to.
It is a sweet film about understanding the meaning of love, but it doesn’t really do much in terms of the exploration of the two lovers. It’s an intellectual marriage rather than a physical one, so the budding chemistry was a bit stale.
The main issue with this film is that their desire for each other wasn’t believable because the metaphors used seemed like a gimmick to woo the other. Meanwhile, this film shows that words do have meaning and have to be used properly towards others.
Even though the runtime is short, it still felt like it took a while to get Mario and Beatriz together. The mother being that involved and trying to stop them went on for too long, and that was the only obstacle.
It didn’t quite work because it felt a bit repetitive in sending the poems back and forth. And also discovered that Beatriz is a lot more than just a pretty face in a bar. That twist in the middle is what made it engaging for the second half, but it wasn’t anything groundbreaking.
If their relationship was more believable, then the connection to them would have made this more enjoyable.
What did you think of the Netflix film Burning Patience? Comment below.
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