Burning (2018)
Directed by Lee Chang-dong; screenplay by Lee Chang-dong and Oh Jung-mi based on ‘Barn Burning’ by Haruki Murakami and also a story by the same name by William Faulkner; starring Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun and Jeon Jong-seo.
4/5
Burning’s plot plays out as a conspiracy against the viewer, drawing you in with a kind of sensitivity and quietude only to spurn you for presuming to know where things were going. At first, it’s a kind of romance. Then, a drama. Then, a mystery or a thriller.
Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is a Faulker-loving, aspiring young writer, lost in his confusions about the world and the nature of the people within it. His father (Choi Seung-ho), an old, antisocial farmer with an irrepressible pride, has been arrested for assaulting a neighbour and Jong-su is forced to move back into his old, empty (save for the singular cow) home to watch over things.
Before he moves, though, Jong-su bumps into Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), an old acquaintance from school, and the two strike up a quick rapport. She’s intoxicating, with aspirations to become an actress, but she’s also an enigma to Jong-su. When she asks him to look after her elusive cat whilst she disappears on a trip to Africa, he agrees readily.
Eventually, Hae-mi returns, but to Jong-su’s dismay she’s no longer alone. With her is Ben (Steven Yeun), a suave, Gatsby-like (as Jong-su paints him) figure – a man who seems to be everything Jong-su isn’t. He drives a Porsche, where Jong-su is stuck with his small, inherited pick-up truck; he’s unflinchingly confident; attractive too. Everything about him appears perfect, but something is definitely off… His presence is unsettling – maybe even threatening. Could it be that he’s a danger to Hae-mi like Jong-su thinks? Or is he just a threat to Jong-su’s confused relationship with her?
It’s a classical kind of love triangle but the smouldering affections and quiet obsessions at the heart of Burning are anything but conventional. Director Lee Chang-dong revels in the ambiguities of the story he has created – based on a short Murakami story called ‘Barn Burning’ – refusing any easy answers, intentionally drawing things out to evoke the utmost discomfort.
Beyond the crude outline I’ve drawn, the narrative is full to brim with little details; pieces to a puzzle that is never quite solved. It sounds infuriating, and it is at least a little bit, but there is a resolution to things – not the kind you may have initially hoped for, but the kind that will haunt you for days to come. I can’t get it out of my head.
At the heart of things is Jong-su’s obsession with Hae-mi as an object – his object – and not their relationship as it may initially appear.
A frustration I can see many having with the film, and a valid criticism in my eyes, is the way in which Hae-mi is constructed. For Jong-su, she’s an object of desire and one he’s less than willing to give up – but this means that she’s never entirely fleshed out as a character.
When they first reunite at the beginning of the film Hae-mi recalls the way Jong-su treated her in school; about the only time he paid her attention being to call her ugly. There’s a faint hope that Jong-su may have changed, but it becomes apparent that he hasn’t. For Jong-su, the only thing that’s changed is that Hae-mi has had plastic surgery.
Things escalate – I won’t give anything away here – and going further than a lack of any kind of focus on Hae-mi and her part in things, Jong-su’s relationship to Ben begins to become the primary concern.
One quiet evening, Ben and Hae-mi drop by Jong-su’s family home and sit outside for drinks. The whole sequence is a stunning display of visual mastery, for one thing – the whole film is in all honesty – but crucially, it’s a moment for Ben and Jong-su to scope each other out.
Jong-su recalls the story of his mother leaving his violent father. How once she was gone, he was forced to collect up all of her belongings and burn them in the yard. How he has nightmares about the whole thing.
Ben responds with a story of his own relationship with that titular, destructive process. Every two months, he burns down abandoned greenhouses as a kind of diabolical sport. As a matter of fact, he supposes, it probably been about two months since he last indulged himself.
From this moment on, he has Jong-su hooked. The notion of this interloper destroying what’s Jong-su’s – at least what he perceives to be his – it’s unbearable, it eats the quiet, repressed Jong-su up inside. Maybe he sees in Ben what he sees inside himself. Regardless of why, he loses interest in Hae-mi – seemingly seduced by his competitor.
The cast play their roles to perfection. Yoo Ah-in lends Jong-su a childlike ease and makes it incredibly difficult to outright condemn Jong-su. Having been so completely isolated for so long, he’s been reduced to a kind of tragic impotence and Ah-in portrays this just superbly.
Ben, played by the now-academy-award-nominated Steven Yeun, is a complete mystery and Yeun lends the character an attractiveness with a distinct edge. Over and over you’ll find yourself waiting for him to provide Jong-su with a fatal blow, to finally put him out of his lovesick misery, only to be greeted with an impressively calculated smile or raise of the eyebrows.
Returning to Hae-mi for a moment, that figure at the centre of the two men’s emotionally violent campaigns, we’ll need to touch back on my one bugbear with the film. It appears to be somewhat intended (in the sense that we’re being aligned with Jong-su, a purposefully toxic character), because ultimately the film is a tale concerned with toxic masculinity, but Hae-mi only ever comes off as that kind of pixie-dream-girl we all know by now.
She’s effortlessly cool and fatally seductive. Independent and hard-to-get, but somehow inherently worth the chase for Jong-su.
In an early scene, she brings Jong-su back to her apartment to show him what he needs to do while she’s away on her trip but things soon take on a new dimension. She’s seducing him – regardless of his pure inaction up to this point.
She tells him of his cruelty towards her at school, but she’s gotten over it clearly, and even turns it round on him to devasting effect. “Now speak the truth,” she demands of him, wanting to know how he feels about her now. When he appears unable to speak, she shuffles ever closer and devastates him: “why can’t you speak?” Then, she leans in.
Clearly, the use of these kinds of tropes is shorthand since she’s essentially got to justify Jong-su’s affections at first and in a very short space of time, but it leaves a bit of a sour taste. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic film and an important one, I think – the kind that forces you to confront yourself when neat answers aren’t provided – it just would have been nice to have seen this aspect develop, or failing that, addressed.
Watched on 15th May 2021