Mark Reviews Movies: BURNING

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 29, 2018

One wonders if Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo), the protagonist of Burning, has experienced much of anything. If he hasn't, that would explain a lot about his behavior throughout the course of this deliberately paced and intricately plotted film.

He simply doesn't seem to understand the ways of the world or other people. A lot of that, perhaps, can be explained by his upbringing, on a small farm outside the South Korean city of Paju, where North Korea can be seen in the distance and the propaganda broadcasts of that country can be heard on the radio. He was raised primarily by his father, after his mother left the family because of the old man's temper. Jong-su has an older, never-seen sister, who has moved on with her life, becoming a wife and mother, while apparently having little to no desire to communicate with the rest of her family.

This is, for the most part, the entirety of what we learn about Jong-su's history. As for his present, it clearly has been defined by that past. He's mostly quiet, entirely shy, and sometimes a little awkward—a clear-cut example of an introvert, played with naturalistic precision by Yoo, if there ever was one.

We doubt he ever has been in love, except for, possibly, the unrequited type. We wonder if he ever has had sex, based on the fumbling way his only sexual encounter in the film goes—not to mention the way he appears to idolize the moment with routine masturbation sessions in the tiny apartment where the sole encounter occurred. Those are strange but telling moments. Standing at a window, he briefly glances at a picture of the woman with whom he had sex, before returning to the tower that reflects light into the apartment. The light was shimmering in the room at the time, and now, that—not the image or the thought of the woman herself—seems to be what fills him with passion.

It's important to mention this because the film, written by Jung-mi Oh and director Chang-dong Lee (adapting Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning"), puts us within Jong-su's way of thinking. The story itself begins as a character study, turns into a drama about an apparent love triangle focused on class conflict, transforms into a mystery, and finally ends up as a thriller. The shifts are so subtle that the plot gets ahead of us before we realize the changes in mode, but that's because we're so caught up in the ways that Jong-su's thinking evolves—or regresses, depending on how one takes the film's series of final revelations—throughout this story.

At the film's start, Jong-su is working little jobs in Paju. By chance, he reunites with Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon), who lived in Jong-su's childhood neighborhood. They talk and reminisce over drinks, with Hae-mi pointing out that he once cruelly teased her as a kid. Later, she recalls that Jong-su saved her life once, too, after she fell in a well (The truth of this story is sketchy, but regardless of its authenticity, it becomes the foundation for a major change in Jong-su).

She asks if he'll watch her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. He agrees. They have sex in her cramped apartment. She leaves the country.

Meanwhile, Jong-su has to care for his childhood home while his father is in jail, awaiting trial for a string of charges for attacking a police officer. If the young man had a lonely life as a kid, it's even lonelier now. He's an aspiring writer who can't figure out what to write. He spends his days tending to this abandoned household and feeding Hae-mi's cat, while his nights amount to sleeping on the couch.

Hae-mi returns from her trip with Ben (Steven Yeun), a new friend who was stuck with her in an airport for a few days, in tow. Ben is of a much wealthier class than Jong-su and Hae-mi, but if this new guy's wealth and good looks make Jong-su jealous, it's impossible to tell. Like he says about his father in a private moment with Ben, Jong-su also appears to keep his emotions bottled up inside. For his part, Ben cannot comprehend emotions at all. He chuckles watching Hae-mi cry about a beautiful African sunset, because, as far back as he can remember, he has never cried in his life.

What's fascinating here is how Oh and Lee eschew the usual conflicts—the romantic triangle and the class dynamics, for example. We can sense those conflicts playing on the story at a thematic level, but because almost the whole of the film is seen from Jong-su's perspective, they are left unspoken, which, in a way, increases the tension—even before the screenplay begins in its mystery and thriller modes.

We're never quite sure where any of these characters truly stand with each other. Is Jong-su envious of Ben's stature in society and in Hae-mi's mind? Does Hae-mi have feelings for Jong-su, Ben, or both of them? Is Ben's curiosity about Jong-su's writing and favorite author sincere, or is it simply posh politeness? How much and what should we take of Ben's visible yawn while watching Hae-mi recreate a dance she saw in Africa?

Whatever the case with any of these questions, the rest of the film follows how Jong-su slowly becomes consumed by Ben's existence, in a way that's similar to how he had been consumed by that moment in Hae-mi's apartment. It begins with Ben's confession of an odd habit: burning down a decrepit greenhouse every two months or so. There's further reason for the obsession, but it's best left to be discovered.

One of the more intriguing dynamics of the film is one of empathy within the emotionless Ben and the changing Jong-su, who eventually sees things from Hae-mi's point of view (although it might be too late, for reasons that are either obvious or uncertain—depending on whether or not we agree with Jong-su's interpretation of the evidence at hand). There's suggested and actual violence by the end of Burning—the suggested apparently driven by a lack of empathy and the actual based in, perhaps, too much. It's feeling too much, a definitive display of how unprepared Jong-su is for the reality of the world, or, most likely, both.

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