Burning is a South Korean psychological thriller mystery drama film, directed by Lee-Chang Dong. This film has a lot to offer; an incredibly clever story, intriguing characters, oddly unsettling music but not closure. The film is based on the short stories ‘Barn Burning ‘ from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami and ‘Barn Burning’ by William Faulkner.
Yoo Ah-in plays the role of the protagonist of the story, Lee Jong-su, an aspiring novelist with a troubled past who stumbles upon his childhood friend Shin Hae-mi played by Jeon Jong-soe, a charismatic carefree woman who leaves for a trip to Africa and returns with Ben, whom she befriends there. Ben is played by Steven Yeun, a Gatsby-esque man who’s strangely charming, seems too good to be clean and fancies pasta and arson. The story becomes increasingly suspenseful with Hae-mi’s disappearance, which is never really cleared out, much like everything that happens after her disappearing into thin air. The ambiguity of the characters and plot developments creates a sense of uneasiness in almost every frame.
There are multiple metaphors and symbols used throughout the film. The Greenhouse, for starters, Ben says he enjoys locating greenhouses and wiping their existence. To him, women are like metaphorical greenhouses, something he does which he sees not as a crime but an act of nature. Or when Hae-mi talks about the great hunger dance, a hunger to seek out the meaning of life, which is also the last time she’s seen in the film. And there’s the well in which she claims to have fallen in as a child, or lack thereof shows how unreliable she is. The film consists of multiple harrowing themes like rage, desire, desperation, and disturbing hobbies. The colour is an interesting aspect in this film, the colour palette mostly consists of lots of blues and reds, indicating danger, passion and everything in between. The sounds in the film are very peculiar, especially ‘crying knife’, the eerie music track that plays when the colours of the frame change to blues. It might even remind you of the creepy toy box music in The Conjuring. The track gives you a feeling that something really terrible has happened, in fact, the most terrible thing is not what happened but the fact that you’re utterly oblivious to it. There’s almost always some sound in the background which distracts you. The disorienting background noise like the traffic, the street music, the loudspeaker blaring North Korean propaganda, and Trump talking crap on the television, all of this makes it impossible for you to focus.
And now the most burning question of all, what in hell really happened in the end? Now you’ll be delighted to know that even the director isn’t entirely certain about this. There are two probable endings, a. Ben is, as most of us would like to believe, a sociopath serial killer who kills Hae-mi for sport and then Jong-su catches up on this and takes his revenge by killing Ben. Funny how the guy who liked wiping the existence of things, has the same happen to him. And b. Ben doesn’t kill her, Hae-mi just disappears. Now there could be countless explanations to that, getting trafficked which isn’t too wild of a theory, maybe suicide or alien abduction or my favourite, she goes on a quest to find her great hunger, which actually turns out to be a party clown. Hey, it could happen, never say never right? Or perhaps she just moves on, but that’s too boring. Was the ending scene a reality or something that happened in Jong-su’s imagination? Because the stabbing session might as well be something that he’s writing in his novel.
Moral of the story? A love triangle never ends well, especially when one of them happens to be a sociopath, and another one has anger issues. And most importantly, if you’re a part of it, try not to go awol.