Burning

Eight years after critical hit Poetry, Korean director Chang-dong Lee translates a very brief and quarter-century old story by Japanese master novelist Haruki Murakami into something distinctly Korean, distinctly contemporary (spoiler warning: there’s a news clip of Trump) and distinctly Chang-dong Lee. But also: into something that utterly captures the essence of Murakami. Thought the harmony between Lee’s film and Murakami’s text, even as different as they are, is something of a paradox—Lee makes notable changes to the protagonist; fleshes out Murakami’s story to create the film’s first two acts, adding a powerful third—Burning belies the notion that auteurs in different mediums can’t fully co-exist in the same work.

Lee Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) is an aspiring young writer who quits his menial job to tend to his incarcerated father’s farm (a storyline the film takes from William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning,” after which Murakami—as referential as ever—named his own story). Jong-su encounters a childhood acquaintance, Shin Hae-mi (Jong-seo Joon), who apparently he interacted with just once as a kid by calling her “ugly.” Anyways, Hae-mi’s all grown up and claims to have had plastic surgery; she and Jong-su strike up a relationship. It’s unusual and unnerving: Hae-mi is erratic and inscrutable, possibly a compulsive liar, while Jong-su can barely do more than gape and breathe. Nonetheless, Lee couches this set-up in exquisite details and rich observation. During first consummation Jong-su stares at a wall in Hae-mi’s cell of an apartment, focused on a fading streak of light reflected from a nearby tower. It means nothing and everything, at once.

Spontaneously (as is her wont), Hae-mi asks Jong-su to watch her perhaps imaginary cat while she takes a trip to Africa to learn about physical (“small”) hunger and existential (”great”) hunger. That’s not critical embellishment, that’s an actual plot-point. While she’s gone, Jong-su goes to her apartment to feed the cat, which he finds evidence of via its droppings; then he fantasizes about Hae-mi while looking at the gleaming tower through her window. When Hae-mi returns to Korea, she—to Jong-su’s suppressed chagrin—has a rich new boyfriend in tow. His name is Ben, and he’s played as a bored but semi-cheerful sociopath by Steven Yeun (who has never been better). When Jong-su asks Ben what he does for a living, Ben responds that he “plays.” Later, Jong-su tells Hae-mi that Ben’s a Gatsby. He says it with venom in his voice.

The way the film’s story flows into uncharted terrain is part of its spell. Something of a love triangle develops, some disturbing idiosyncrasies are revealed (not just about Ben) and some bad stuff happens. Meanwhile, Lee seems intent on framing the story in socio-political context; Hae-mi and Ben come to visit Jong-su at his father farm’s, near the border of South and North Korea. Loudspeaker propaganda messages echo from the hilly distance; “How fun,” chimes Ben. This context works best when integrated smoothly into such scenes that stay focused on the story of these three characters. Other scenes that lean too hard on the Faulkner storyline or that seem to exist solely to portray the Korean nation’s dichotomy and class struggle (at one point Jong-su goes to a joke of a job “interview”) add to the film’s hefty run-time, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily.