************************This review contains spoilers****************************
Burning follows a young Korean man named Lee Jong-soo (Ah-In Yoo) who works as a delivery boy to make ends meet while his farmer father stands trial for an assault case. While making deliveries, Lee runs into Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon), a former classmate and neighbor. Shortly after rekindling their friendship and sparking a bit of a love affair, Hae-Mi embarks upon a vacation to Africa. When she returns, she brings back a new friend she met while on vacation named Ben (Steve Yeun) who, in addition to being a mysterious, also enjoys a dangerous hobby that he eventually shares with Lee.
Burning begins very slowly and methodically, appearing at first to be going into the realm of simple character study. As the story progresses however, viewers will gradually come to realize there is a mystery at the film’s center which director Chang-dong Lee has been subtly hinting at. A conversation between Ben and Lee about Ben’s hobby of burning greenhouses is taken at face value at first, but as Lee comes to realize what Ben is saying isn’t as it seems, so does the audience. As the story progresses, it appears that the “greenhouses” in question are young women and Ben’s next target that is “very close” to Lee’s home is in actuality Hae-mi herself. It is immediately apparent that Ben’s confession isn’t literal and something sinister lies beneath, but watching it slowly unravel does work to keep viewers interested in the film through its long runtime.
While Ben’s “burning of greenhouses” directly referenced Hae-mi and the women he targets in general, Lee also has found himself burned by Ben’s murderous actions in terms of the collateral damage that has been inflicted upon him by Hae-mi’s death. Lee becomes obsessed with Ben and unraveling out not only what role he had to play in Hae-mi’s disappearance, but what allure he ultimately held over her and people in general. Lee turns from a mild mannered, kind of quiet young man into a paranoid, erratic obsessive whose behavior culminates into him becoming similar to his father, a man he had always pitied and never wanted to be. The jealousy within Lee that is awoken by Ben and Hae-mi’s relationship results in him lashing out emotionally at Hae-mi, insinuating that she is a whore in the final conversation they have, and results in his eventual killing and burning of Ben. Lee’s act of burning not only Ben’s body but every stitch of clothing he wore during the murder, driving off from the scene completely naked, served as a metaphor for the figurative burning of who Lee was before meeting Ben and who he became after as noted in the first sentence of this paragraph. Its inclusion accentuates the power of the theme and overall narrative.
Burning is a slow burn of a film (no pun intended) that unravels slowly, but results in a mystery that is satisfying once it starts to come into clear focus and draws viewers into becoming invested in the outcome. Despite this element of the film’s plot and how well done and executed that aspect of Burning is, the film isn’t one that sticks with you after having watched it and it does feel a little overlong due to its two and a half hour runtime. Steve Yeun’s performance stands out among the cast as the seemingly well adjusted man with something sinister within him being hidden just beneath the surface. His portrayal of Ben is exactly how you’d expect a sociopath to behave. Chang-dong Lee also supplies the film with multiple moments of notable cinematography that add some visual pizazz. Still, Burning never elevates itself beyond a passably entertaining time at the movies.
Image: CGV Arthouse
