Review: Burning

Image courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.

Lee Chang-dong's enigmatic "Burning" is a mesmerizing meditation on perception and a slow burn thriller that focuses on class tensions and the nature of truth in a beguiling manner. It's the sort of film that you find yourself pondering for hours - and likely days - after wandering out of the theater.

Chang-dong's previous work - especially his breakthrough, "Oasis," and the emotionally grueling "Secret Sunshine" - often utilize themes of crime and punishment as well as the toll such things take on relationships. This could also be used to characterize "Burning," but attempting to pin it down is a task that will likely be fruitless for those who try.

The film is split into two very distinct halves, at least stylistically, although there's nothing to indicate when one has slipped into the other. The picture's first half is told in a realist fashion as we meet delivery boy Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo), whom we first spot lugging a load of clothing that he is attempting to sell to a second-hand store. In front of the store, he meets a young woman named Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jun), who says that she knew Jong-su from when they were children. Although she claims he told her that she was ugly when they were young, he quickly becomes smitten with her.

Their relationship moves along quickly - Hae-mi takes Jong-su to her cramped apartment, where they have sex, and then asks him to feed her cat, Boil, while she is away on a trip to Africa. However, Jong-su never spots the cat and starts to wonder if it even exists. This is a central theme in "Burning" and there's a sequence of great foreshadowing early on when Hae-mi, who is taking pantomime classes, pretends to strip the peeling off an imaginary tangerine and acts as if she is eating it. She instructs Jong-su: "Don't think that there is a tangerine here. Forget that there isn't one. The important thing is that you really want one."

Jong-su is deeply disappointed when Hae-mi returns from Africa with a new beau in tow - Ben (Steven Yeun), a wealthy guy who drives a Porsche, has a flashy apartment and notes that he "plays" when asked about his line of work. However, Jong-su continues to play the third wheel to Hae-mi and Ben, tagging along to restaurants, parties and nightclubs.

A pivotal scene halfway through the film allows for the picture to change tones. Smoking weed at Jong-su's farm - where he lives alone due to his father being in jail and on trial for having assaulted a neighboring farmer - the trio watch as the breeze blows the branches of the trees and the sun sets. Hae-mi strips off her shirt and displays two dances she learned in Africa: that of the "Little Hunger" (those who are literally hungry) and the "Great Hunger" (those who hunger to understand the mysteries of life). As she dances, Ben admits to Jong-su that he has a hobby of burning down greenhouses, about which Jong-su later begins to wonder whether this is a metaphor for something more sinister, and notes that he believes morality matters little in the world, but rather "just the morals of nature."

Then, Hae-mi seemingly goes missing and Jong-su, whose last words to her were of an unkind nature, takes on the role of an obsessed detective, first paying visits to nearby greenhouses to see if Ben's claims of having burned one down are true, and then stalking Ben to determine whether he had anything to do with Jong-su's paramour's disappearance. The film has a resolution, but it's never quite clear whether what Jong-su believed to have happened is actually what happened. In other words, this is a film about the unknowability of life's mysteries.

And mysteries abound in this film. Hae-mi's tangerine peeling comes to stand for much more by the film's end. There's the question of whether her cat exits as well as whether Ben actually burns down greenhouses or if he's referring to something else entirely. Jong-su's phone mysteriously rings throughout the film, but no one speaks when he picks up. The caller appears to be identified later in the film, but we can't really be sure. Hae-mi tells Jong-su a story about how she fell into a well as a girl, but other people later refute her story, insinuating that she made the whole thing up.

The film is also concerned with class differences in South Korea. Jong-su - who lives in an isolated section of the country that is so close to the North Korean border that propaganda from that nation can often be heard being broadcast in the distance - is lower class and clearly resents Ben, whom he calls "the Great Gatsby." At one point in the film, Donald Trump - a silver spoon baby if there ever was one - is speaking in the foreground, while Jong-su takes a piss in the background. Another interesting moment occurs late in the film when a group of Ben's wealthy friends refer to the United States and China as two great superpowers, while South Korea is stuck between them, and the analogy can also relate to the relationship between the film's three central characters.

Regarding the film's title, there is burning both figurative (Jong-su's passion for Hae-mi) and literal (Ben's alleged hobby of setting greenhouses aflame). However, there are only two scenes of actual burning - one in which a young Jong-su, via flashback, is seen setting his mother's clothes on fire after she fled the family, and the finale in which clothes are again burnt, but this time as a sort of cleansing ritual.

Chang-dong's film is one of the year's most inscrutable and original. It's a movie about the vast space between what we think we know and what actually is. It's the type of picture that just when you think you have figured it out, it eludes your grasp. Blending realism and dream-like sequences, terrific acting and great writing (did I mention it's based on a Haruki Murakami short story that is, in turn, inspired by one from William Faulkner?), "Burning" is one of the year's must-see movies.