Burning – Beoning (2018)

Directed by: Lee Chang-dong | 148 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Ah-In Yoo, Steven Yeun, Jong-seo Jeon, Soo-Kyung Kim, Seung-ho Choi, Seong-kun Mun, Bok-gi Min, Soo-Jeong Lee, Hye-ra Ban, Mi-Kyung Cha, Bong-ryeon Lee

Lee Jong-su is an aspiring writer. Haemi is a promo girl who grew up in the same neighborhood as Jong-su. After years of not seeing each other, a chance meeting in town makes for a melancholy one-night stand. After which Jong-su falls head over heels in love with his former neighbor.

That infatuation gets in the way when suddenly the mysterious Ben shows up. Ben is a young millionaire whom Haemi met while on vacation. Things get really tricky when Ben confesses his hobbies to Jong-su: the bored millionaire loves to set fire to greenhouses. Greenhouses that are empty inside, that no one will miss, that seem as if they never existed. Another hobby of Ben is speaking in metaphors.

This extraordinary story forms the basis of the Korean mystery drama ‘Burning’ by acclaimed director Lee Chang-dong (‘Poetry’, ‘Secret Sunshine’). The film is based on a short story by Japanese grandmaster Haruki Murakami (“Norwegian Wood”, “Tony Takitani”). More than in his previous book adaptations, you can recognize the hand of the author here. In details (cats, wells, characters who suddenly disappear, jazzy drinking places, life in the big city) and in the characters. Jong-su is a typical Murakami character, a man who does not live but who lets life overwhelm him. Haemi is a spontaneous, cheerful, slightly eccentric type on the outside, but inside there is emptiness and despair. Ben is a bored rich man who has strayed dangerously far from normal life.

‘Burning’ takes all the time to tell his story, with the love triangle between Jong-su, Ben and Haemi as the main theme. The sidelines seem a little less interesting – Jong-su’s arrested father, the search for a well, the existence or not of a cat – but they all seem to fit into the bigger picture.

The bigger picture could have been a little shorter, but otherwise ‘Burning’ is a film to be framed. Exciting story, unusual locations, the fantastic Jong-seo Jeon (Haemi), wonderful music, stimulating scenes and of course the unforgettable dance of the Great Hunger, performed during a sunset in the yard of an abandoned farm. A film with sad themes and motifs, about metropolitan loneliness and harrowing social inequality, but you can’t escape that either with a Murakami film.