Burn­ing

Twen­tysome­thing deliv­ery boy Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is the guy who nev­er gets the girl, but out of the blue, Hae-mi (Jun Jong-seo), a cute pro­mo­tions assis­tant who claims to have gone to his rur­al high school, is mak­ing her inter­est in him very obvi­ous. Soon they’re canoodling in her tiny Seoul apart­ment just as the sun illu­mi­nates the place. This is the crown­ing moment of Jong-su’s life, but Lee Chang-dong, South Korea’s mas­ter of glitchy sto­ry­telling, doesn’t allow him to enjoy it for long.

Hae-mi has a friend, the oleagi­nous Ben (Steven Yeun). A rich guy coast­ing along in his Porsche 911 on daddy’s mon­ey. He’s smug­ness per­son­i­fied, and just a tiny bit creepy, though Jong-su can’t say what he real­ly thinks for fear of upset­ting Hae-mi. Frankly, we feel his pain, and when Hae­mi sud­den­ly dis­ap­pears with­out trace, he’s con­vinced that Mis­ter Trust Fund is some­how involved. Ben, after all, has a predilec­tion for unusu­al memen­tos, and has con­fessed to a habit of burn­ing down aban­doned green­hous­es for pulse-quick­en­ing kicks.

In the Haru­ki Muraka­mi short sto­ry, ​‘Barn Burn­ing’, which inspired all this, it is farm build­ings which go up in smoke, but the film is, in many respects, about burn­ing inside, and how a class-dri­ven sense of ingrained vic­tim­hood and social frus­tra­tion can impact on the way you actu­al­ly see the world. South Kore­ans fought hard for democ­ra­cy but now find them­selves part­ly in thrall to an untouch­able cor­po­rate über-class, though they’re hard­ly alone in feel­ing bristling exas­per­a­tion at the unde­serv­ing rich. Can Jong-su real­ly be sure though?

The film’s 148 min­utes amble along with the teas­ing uncer­tain­ty of, say, Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, leav­ing us eager for a com­pelling nar­ra­tive pat­tern to offer clo­sure. Where the likes of 2007’s Secret Sun­shine and 2010’s Poet­ry affirmed Lee’s pre­cise nar­ra­tive facil­i­ty, in Burn­ing it’s the play of ambi­gu­i­ty which draws us in, for although Jong-su is nom­i­nal­ly the would-be writer, he might just be being played by the sheer slip­per­i­ness of his Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl lover and her sleek pal.

It’s a film where every detail counts, so pay atten­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion about mim­ing how to eat a tan­ger­ine, and keep your eyes peeled for Hae-mi’s seem­ing­ly invis­i­ble cat. There’s a dia­logue going on here about how we can ever be cer­tain about what we think we know, yet it’s couched with­in a film whose lurch­ing hand­held Cin­e­maS­cope fram­ing and pen­chant for turn­ing mag­ic-hour light into a sym­pho­ny of murk leave us in an envelop­ing mias­ma of unease.

The per­for­mances, too, are spot-on: rough-hewn Yoo Ah-in is some­how gorm­less yet sym­pa­thet­ic as the bum­bling Jong-su; US-based co-star Steven Yeun exudes supe­ri­or­i­ty while also find­ing a com­plex human­i­ty in his char­ac­ter; and star­tling new­com­er Jun Jong-seo is a quick­sil­ver dis­cov­ery as the mys­tery girl. Under­scored by a suit­ably spooky ambi­ent score from Lee Sung-hyun (aka Mowg), it all comes togeth­er in a tru­ly haunt­ing piece of cin­e­ma, impact­ing on heart, mind and the very pit of your tum­my. It’s grip­ping in the moment, but with plen­ty to take away for after­wards. Genius real­ly isn’t too strong a word.