Burning (2018)

I believe people who as kids could not silently work on a puzzle for hours, but who gave up after only completing the edges, probably won't be fond of 'Burning'.

I believe people who always need a recipe, even after having cooked eggs hundreds of times before in their lives, probably won't be fond of 'Burning'.

I believe boys or men who never cry because they genuinely think it's for girls probably won't be fans of 'Burning'. (This is different from having been taught not to cry by elder brothers, like myself)

I believe people who, watching films or reading books, have never empathised with the feelings of someone who leads a completely different life, probably won't be fans of 'Burning'.

I cannot tell you to like it, but I am this (probably sensitive) guy who was really moved by the film. It haunts me, and I'll tell you why.

The way director Lee Chang-Dong made me experience Jongsu's powerlessness is riveting. I could feel his anger and insecurity when poor Jongsu discovered his 'girlfriend' Hae-Mi accompanied by the shining and rich Ben at the airport. Later on, Hae-Mi goes missing and Jongsu does everything in his power to find her. The suspense and mystery really killed me.

I found 'Burning' to be discomforting and haunting. It shows and doesn't tell, which makes you pay attention to little details. Along the way, Chang-Dong gives clues about why Ben is really interested in Hae-Mi (is he really?) I wondered about the tiny bits of phrase or looks on faces that on the first hearing and viewing may seem irrelevant, but from which I experienced an aha-erlebnis while I was biking home from the theatre.

For me personally, this movie is a true ten out of ten. I recommend you not to go to the film by yourself, but to have someone with you to discuss its details. If you want to understand everything, you'll have to think. Even then, your friend will probably have spotted the meaning of something you thought was strange. Lipstick, for example.

If you don't like these kind of films, that's okay. I guess it really is what I like about films, and I hope you will try to see what I saw.

Fmovies: Terms like "masterpiece" and "breathtaking" are used far too often, yet they define Lee Chang-dong's latest, eight years after his brutally lyrical Poetry (2010). However, Burning, based on Haruki Murakami's short story Barn Burning, is not an easy film to watch. Allusive and elusive, it begins as a brilliant character study and gradually shifts its gear segueing into psychological thriller territory.

Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a part-time worker, bumps into Hae-mi (Jun Jeong-seo) while delivering, who used to live in the same neighborhood. Hae-mi asks him to look after her cat while she's on a trip to Africa. When Hae-mi comes back, she introduces Ben (Steven Yuen), a mysterious guy she met in Africa, to Jong-su. One day, Ben visits Jong-su's with Hae-mi and confesses to him during a pot session that he burns abandoned greenhouses.

In anticipation of the film, I re-read the Haruki Murakami's short story taken from the anthology The Elephant Vanishes. Like a lot of his works, the story feels cryptic, simple on the surface, surreal once it gets under your skin. There is a mystery but Murakami doesn't quite persuade you to penetrate beneath the veneer. I certainly didn't think for one second it could be adapted into a film because there doesn't seem to be much of a plot at all. My wife shared the same sentiment. We were all the more curious as to what Lee could distill from this intriguing short story.

Like Murakami's distinctive prose, Lee's Burning retains the other-worldly surreality through arthouse pacing and artful cinematography. The first act moves at a languid pace as we observe Jong-su's infectious reticence and Hae-mi's enthusiastic flamboyance. It is an unlikely match, but you will sense the possibility of a sweet romance. They long to cling near one another like satellites, but they will never share the same orbit because forming the third vertex of the triangular relationship is Ben, the coolly detached upper-class, the spanner in the works, the Great Gatsby.

As much as the first act plays like a meditative dance of a fever dream and an elegy for lost innocence, I also recognise that it will be divisive. I have a feeling most filmgoers won't have the patience to sit through it and be emotionally vested in the characters. Lee may be an extraordinary image maker, gently probing deep into the human psyche, its desires and impulses, but the story feels opaque, dense, resembling an enigma. But if one is a serious filmgoer, it is easy to slip into Lee's rhapsodic wonder of a tale, patiently waiting for the bomb to drop. It is when the head film becomes a mind film in the second act that it pays dividends tenfold.

If Murakami's short story feels deceptively simple, Lee takes it into the nether region of complexity. He unravels what it means to be consumed by a mystery and what it means to be alive. The production is meticulously artful - ponder over how Jong-su's home is a stone's throw from the border of both Koreas and how propaganda is blaring every other hour, and ravel in the beautiful light of the sunset as Ben shares his unusual hobby. Lee is able to externalise the interior states of the human mind in extraordinary ways. The subtext of social classes in the Korean society also plunges a knife into one's consciousness. He is also helped by a unique soundtrack of discordant musical cues that grow in mysterious power as the story grows in stature. Lee builds the final act to a feverish high and

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.

Burning fmovies. It's the rare film that gets its value upon reflection rather than during watching. It's not boring as such, but with its extremely long runtime it does generally feel slow paced and often runs the risk of being quite dull. Luckily though, the pure sense of mystery that surrounds the three core players (our protagonist included) and the film's world as a whole keeps things intriguing throughout. As the narrative progresses, however, and the core mystery of the piece arrives, things get a lot more intriguing and this intrigue lasts long after the haunting finale. That's where the film really gets its merit. None of the enigmas are definitively answered, and this leads to an extremely subtle - yet wholly rewarding - experience that allows you to draw your own conclusions of what it was actually about. The picture could be about several different things, and it all depends on the individual spectator response. This, as well as the complete lack of on-the-nose exposition, is very refreshing in today's age of cinema where nothing is left to the imagination anymore. We are not told, or even explicitly shown, anything integral to answer the core mystery and this allows you to reflect on all of the intricacies of several different scenes in order to draw your own conclusions. It really is a one of a kind experience that will leave you scrutinising for days, discovering a new narrative possibility upon every thought. Its slow pace and the sense that it's not really going anywhere might make it seem hard to get through initially, but once it's over it becomes a rich, rewarding experience. 7/10

Based on the short story "Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami: in Paju, South Korea, Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is a young aspiring writer from a dysfunctional family doing odd jobs while also looking after the family farm nearby. He reconnects with a former classmate Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) whose affections later turn to the very rich Ben (Steven Yuen). Ben's unusual character take everyone down a mysterious path.

At two and a half hours, the film is perhaps too long especially as the first half begins to get dull at a certain point. This thankfully changes when the story and its energy get very mysterious. Here is where the film earns many points for its uniqueness and its subtle ways to lure the viewer into its web. In a good way, this segment is rarely frightening but always intriguing. Also, class difference plays a major role but without being obviously so.

The audience is teased overall with only a minimal amount of information - just enough to understand while still yearning for more by the end. While a bit more information might have raised the film overall, it's still fair to say that the tease pays off for the most part.

I must say that this is one of that kind of movies with slow pace but great reward at the end, the three main characters are interesting (specially the girl which is lovely) and even if superficially you don't see anything particularly special, you feel curious enough to see what is going to happen with the three of them, specially when you start to see the key elements that make this movie awesome.

With a wonderful cinematography, great acting and direction, and beautifully adapted from a short story by Murakami, I still can't believe this is not nominated for the Oscar.

If you don't care if a movie is slow and for a long period of time nothing is going on, try this one because it has a deep story and the production in general is great.