Burning

Young South Korean filmmakers have a layered vitality one doesn't find anywhere else. Filmmaking is all about mapping what we have as cinematic conveyance to what we yearn for internally. That's the game, the expected contract between filmmaker and viewer. We negotiate that as we go, sometimes being outside the story as normal interpreters, sometimes inside the story filling in bits.

One way to go about this is for the filmmaker to trick the viewer when in internal mode to make assumptions that are later revealed to shock. A common technique is to tantalize with some erotic vision - easily cinematic - and later lead us into reviling misogynistic exploitive behaviour.

More nuanced is mixing realities between what we invent from what we are shown and what an on-screen sometime narrator does. This is rich territory for filmmakers willing to go there, and I think the more we experiment, the greater our vocabulary will be.

We are tuned to have an in-story interpreter. Our main character is a writer, and we are pointed to some books with metaphors that cross into reality.

We see him in the longish first act conjure narrative reality from sexual fantasy. Later, he literally writes what we presumably see, while sitting in the girl's apartment but outfitted for himself. The sexual tryst is still in the smell of the place.

We see his love interest go well out of our way to present the importance of (pantomime) living richly in a created reality. We have her describe the 'great hunger' for revelation, encountered in dance she describes and later demonstrates, in her own encounter in Africa - a trip likely never taken.

We have questionable memories. Is she genuinely the person who lived in the neighborhood when they were children? Is the father overcome by past roles he cannot escape? Is the newly recovered mother genuine? What role does plastic surgery play, once we see the 'makeup' scene at the narratively frugal end?

The referenced Gatsby story to those of us interested in these things, is rich with mixed fantasies from the writer and narrator. All the real action here is in the context of broadcast propaganda; the MacGuffins are neglected glass houses in a context where houses matter, and may even (dimly) reference quantum realities.

We never know who is conspiring with whom, who is imaginary and what motives are to be trusted.

So the art here is in transporting us into this folded space where we get destabilized, but not so much we lose our engagement. That's a major accomplishment in itself. Few can do it and most are Asian.

But we want the investment to matter. I want a part of my soul turned inside out to challenge me by the evoked inner me. Possibly, this failure is because I did not pretend to fall in love with the girl. The seduction did not overlap beyond the two young men, possibly because of culture, age and suspicion.

I found this to be perhaps the most suspenseful film of the year so far. That suspense is not the usual type found in regular horror or thriller films, but it instead comes from the atmosphere and pacing of the film that hints at darker truths and ambiguities. Technically this is superbly done, with the cinematography and score standing out in particular. Although it's the lead actor who has to do all of the heavy lifting, it is Steven Yeun's performance that leaves the most impact. He's practically an enigma throughout the whole thing, and leaves so much open to interpretation and perception that it's not an easy role at all.

Wow. Didn't do it for me. Characters were bland. Story was bland. Pacing was plodding and slow. I know I'm going against the grain here, but something definitely went over my head.

An amazingly graceful Korean story, exciting the viewer's attention and not letting go until the end. The film isn't for a wide audience, lasts 2 and a half hours, it goes slowly and asks a lot of questions. But the plot is built correctly, so that the viewer can understand the characters and start thinking about the questions that have arisen. The independent film seems to be divided into 2 parts: the first tells the story of a love triangle, and the second goes to a fascinating detective thriller. Director Lee Chang-dong wonderfully plays with the viewers' imagination who are trying to understand the thoughts of the main characters and their intentions. I liked very much the juxtaposition of the main characters - the writer Lee Jong-soo, who cannot see the hidden meaning and thus awakens a strong hunger inside himself, which doesn't allow him to sleep and to enjoy a life, to create; his opponent, Ben, a kind of rich Gatsby, quite the opposite one, he is filled with inspiration and understands the true beauty of all things, thus filling himself and everyone around him with a mysterious special flame. The narration is slow, during this time you can fully enjoy the visual component, excellent camera work. Scene setting, editing, actors' play - everything works for the picture and its success. No wonder that the film won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

"To me, the world is a mystery."

Burning as childhood trauma (Jong-su forced by his father to incinerate his mother's clothes as a child), burning as a desire to know the meaning of life, or to have never existed at all (Hae-mi's memories of the Great Hunger dance in front of a bonfire in Africa, and the blazing sunset), and burning as sheer nihilistic sociopathy (Ben torching greenhouses for kicks, and that's of course not all he's up to). Three indelible characters, three brilliant performances.

The class distinctions are a little sharp between characters that live on a farm near the North Korean border, in a cramped apartment in the shadow of Seoul Tower, and in a luxurious suite in Gangnam, but serve to pose an underlying, smoldering question - how can we make sense of a world where a college graduate can't get a job that isn't dehumanizing, while the entitled rich blithely toy with people's lives without a care in the world? A masterpiece from Lee Chang-dong.