Study of class conflict blazing with mystery
Cannes Film Festival Burning Cert TBC, 155 min ★★★★★ Dir Lee Chang-dong Starring Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, Jeon Jong-seo
Burning, which could easily emerge as this year’s Palme d’or favourite, is the first film in eight years from South Korea’s Lee Changdong, whose challenging, ambiguous films – Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007), Poetry (2010) – are the kind that grow and grow in the mind afterwards.
That rule particularly applies here, because of a skin-crawling climactic scene, brilliantly orchestrated, that bathes every previous one in a chilly new light. What precedes is a study of buried class conflict in contemporary Seoul, of unspoken rage, palpable alienation and sexual longing. But it keeps a remarkably tight lid on these themes, until the shocking eruption.
The film’s mysterious immensity is especially striking given the source, Barn Burning – a 10-page short story by Haruki Murakami, with the same title as one by William Faulkner. Lee has built a carefully modulated story of his own around Murakami’s matchbox of an idea, about two rival suitors, one of whom makes a strange – and not necessarily trustworthy – confession about arson.
The main character is Jongsoo (Yoo Ah-in), a young, working-class guy from a farming background, whose father (who never speaks) is in and out of courtrooms because of a repeated pattern – this comes from Faulkner – of vengeful and violent behaviour. At the start, Jongsoo meets the forward, impulsive Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo) at a raffle on the street, and she says she remembers him from childhood when he rescued her out of a well. Jongsoo can’t remember this, but does not object when Haemi invites him to her flat, on the pretext of feeding her cat.
Tenderly, and clumsily, they have sex. Whatever we feel about Jongsoo here, though – he gazes mysteriously during the act on a sunbeam, reflected off the Namsan Tower, which brightens Haemi’s room for a brief moment each day – is going to mutate unpredictably as the film proceeds.
The same is true of Haemi, who abruptly departs to Kenya on a two-week trip, leaving Jongsoo listless and underoccupied. The cat, which he returns to try to feed, never makes an appearance, just as Jongsoo’s father is perpetually absent. And Jongsoo’s idea of keeping his own company, which he often has no choice but to do, is pretty unsettling, tending towards masturbation – eyes fixed on that tower – and an alleged writing project we barely see him bothering with.
The story gains a crucial third character when Haemi sweeps back from Kenya, having met Ben (Steven Yeun), a yuppie who accompanies her, much to Jongsoo’s obvious dismay, when she comes through arrivals. Though the new couple make a pointed effort to hang out with him, visit, and smoke weed, his third-wheel status is cringingly obvious.
There are parallels with Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books here, particularly in the resentment Jongsoo feels towards Ben, who has a fabulous wood-panelled apartment in Seoul, a sports car, and an affable if bored air. This film’s Jay Gatsby or Dickie Greenleaf, he’s given a lot of smiling poise by Yeun – a Korean-american star on the rise – and a facade of unrufflable bonhomie that makes him Jongsoo’s secret nemesis.
The film’s daring is how rudderless Jongsoo becomes as a protagonist, while he convinces himself that he’s fallen in love. Haemi, given to impromptu moments of performance art, is not without her own issues. In the film’s most beautifully composed sequence, she dances to Miles Davis, stoned and topless, with the sun going behind trees at Jongsoo’s farm. As the light fades, she starts to cry, and it’s not long before she will vanish again.
This is Lee’s closest-ever film to a thriller, but it defies expectations, offering multiple, murky solutions to a set of mysteries at once. The only clarity, in a perverse way, comes in the irreversible last shot, as if everything that has vexed and confused Jongsoo could be symbolically torched to purify his soul. But it’s a black place inside. The sun has gone for good.