Movie Review 'Burning'

Burning is an American film noir dressed in modern, South Korean sensibilities and aesthetics. This mystery about a missing girl and the two men in her sphere is a fascinating meditation on obsession and sexual politics. Directed by the brilliant Lee Chang Dong, Burning doesn’t appear headed anywhere until it finally arrives at a place you could not have imagined at the start. Desire, jealousy, rage, all feelings that burn come into play by the end of this tremendous film.

Burning stars Yoo Ah-In as Lee Jong-Su, an aspiring novelist who hasn’t written a single word since leaving college. One day while working a menial job, Lee runs into his childhood neighbor, Shin Hae-Mi (Jeon Jong Seo). The two strike up a conversation and tentatively begin a friendship/relationship. Shin Hae-Mi even goes as far as asking Lee to watch her cat while she goes on a trip to Africa. This is on their first date.

The first act is coy and strange; romantic in a very odd way. Shin Hae-Mi is an unusual character, she’s flighty but charming. She’s effortlessly sexy and the two eventually fall into bed together, although the sex is almost comically presented. We’re left to wonder exactly where this relationship is headed, whether she sees Lee as someone she wants to be with or a friend she can occasionally sleep with if the mood strikes.

Then she goes to Africa and the strangeness of Burning continues to play as Lee feeds her cat, though he’s not certain the cat exists, and pines for her return by masturbating in her apartment, not so discreetly. When Shin Hae-Mi does return, she’s not alone. While volunteering in Kenya she met Ben (Steven Yuen, The Walking Dead). Ben is handsome and arrogant and treats Lee in a friendly but off-puttingly so manner.

It appears that Shin Hae-Mi is in a relationship with Ben and she’s not all that concerned for Lee’s feelings about that. That said, she makes effort to include him in a friendly fashion and he accepts in a sign of remarkable maturity. He’s suspicious and jealous but he’s rather inscrutable about it when they're all together. It isn’t until Ben and Shin Hae-Mi make a surprise visit to Lee’s new home on his family farm that Lee makes his feelings known but not to Shin, but to Ben.'

Metaphor eventually comes to take hold of everything in the movie. A line regarding greenhouses and arson begins a cat and mouse like conversation that carries over from the frenemy hangout at the farm through the final act of the movie. This one conversation becomes the center of the movie and we, like Lee, become obsessed with just what this metaphor truly implies.

The skill with which director Lee Jang Dong layers in this mystery is glorious. While it could be obvious, he uses some strongly Hitchcock influenced touches to keep the mystery ever so tantalizingly in play. Then we get to an ending which reeks strongly of Fincher in how it doesn’t play around. Subtext quickly becomes text and while we don’t get a complete resolution, what we do get is powerful and visually exciting.

Speaking of visual excitement, Burning is a great looking movie on top of being an incredibly entertaining movie. Cinematographer Hong Kyung Pyo does an exceptional job of crafting visually interesting palettes throughout the movie. He takes especially strong advantage of Shin Hae-Mi’s obsession with sunsets and the farm scene I mentioned earlier is bathed beautifully in a slowly slipping away sun.

This scene is notable also for the nudity that some have criticized as unnecessary or exploitative. In the scene, Shin Hae-Mi has smoked pot and is basking in the last light of the sun. Throughout the movie she has discussed a pair of ancient African dances, the dance of little hunger and the dance of great hunger. Little Hunger is hunger for actual food while great hunger is the hunger for the meaning of life.

In this scene, a topless Shin Hae-Mi performs both dances as she builds toward the dance of great hunger. She is seeking the meaning of life and the context of the movie is about to give this moment even greater meaning. Does she need to be topless? It does play a role in how she and Lee separate as he uses this moment to say something horrible out of jealousy but the point of the nudity is perhaps just sheer beauty.

It’s a gorgeous scene. Shin Hae-Mi is a beautiful woman and the scene is beautifully lensed. I loved the jazz score that accompanies her and the fact that she is performing this burlesque about 100 yards from the border of North and South Korea has a perverse edge to it. But also consider it from the perspective of a taunt to two men pursuing her. She has more freedom than them, she can raise their pulses, she can increase their desire and they just have to watch.

It fits her character, it fits the young woman we’ve come to know through the movie. It’s part of what Lee finds so attractive about her even as he castigates her for it. He’s angry that he can’t possess her and she makes sure he knows it. The same message is intended for Ben but here again, the movie has a ways to go before that becomes clear and before any effect on Ben is to be noted.

I’m being purposefully vague here because I don’t want to spoil anything about Burning. I adored so much of this movie. It’s a thriller that plays by its own rules. There are no diversions into legalities, just three characters and an overarching mystery that unfolds not unlike a beautiful woman undressing in the sunlight. You're compelled by the beauty and sucked in by the spectacle, you revolt against the implications and become obsessed by the meaning of it all.