Burning
A young man reconnects with a childhood acquaintance, then grows obsessed and suspicious of the wealthy stranger she introduces after she suddenly disappears.
It's a great film, engrossing, suspenseful, and strange.
Jongsu, a would-be writer scraping by on odd jobs, meets Haemi, a woman he knew as a child, and drifts into a tentative affair. She leaves for a trip and returns with Ben, a wealthy, unreadable man. When Haemi vanishes, Jongsu fixes on Ben, certain of a crime he cannot name or prove.
The film competed at Cannes in 2018, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and topped Screen International's critics' jury grid with a record score. Critics admired its patient accumulation of dread and its refusal to confirm what any character, or the audience, suspects. Steven Yeun, as Ben, drew particular notice for a performance of smooth, affectless menace.
For a psychodynamic clinician, the film stages envy and class resentment with unusual precision: Jongsu's rage gathers around a man who has everything he lacks and seems to want for nothing. It also tracks obsessive uncertainty, a mind that circles a suspicion it can neither verify nor release, and the way projection fills an absence with whatever the watcher most fears or desires.
Director
Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, and novelist who served as the country's Minister of Culture and Tourism. His films attend closely to grief, class and resentment, and the pull of obsession, often leaving motive and meaning unresolved. Secret Sunshine traces a mother's mourning; Poetry follows an aging woman facing memory loss and moral reckoning. Burning, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 2018, studies longing, ambiguity, and quiet class rage.
Details
- 2018
- 148 min
- South Korea
- Korean
- Film
- Cannes 2018 Competition selection; Cannes FIPRESCI Prize 2018 won; South Korea's Academy Award submission (shortlisted, not nominated)