Lee Chang-dong’s 2018thrillerBurningis definitely not an easy watch.
Beautiful, engaging, and reflexive,Burningis an easy addition to any best of 2018 list.
What Is ‘Burning’ About?
Not becauseBurningis a particularly twisty thriller, far from it.
Now, Jong-su lives in an area surrounded by little abandoned greenhouses.
There’s more than a bit of red on them.
Image via CGV Arthouse
Jong-su asks Ben if he’s not afraid of getting in trouble for his little hobby.
It’s a naive question, for sure.
Besides, Ben tells Jong-su, South Korea is full of abandoned greenhouses that no one cares about.
Image via CGV Arthouse
Ugly, displeasing little things that many would like to see gone.
Or maybe he is, but the movie doesn’t want us to interpret it that way.
A few pieces of evidence seem to point to him being in the right direction.
Image via CGV Arthouse
Could this have been the lake into which he threw Hae-mi’s “burned down” body?
Yes,everything points to Ben being a cold-blooded serial killer.
Hae-mi has left her affairs in order before disappearing, her apartment uncharacteristically tidy.
Finally, there’s the cat.
Jong-su has never seen Hae-mi’s cat, who would hide whenever strangers were around.
So is Ben’s new cat truly Hae-mi’s?
Or is it just a coincidence that he ran towards Jong-su when he called him Boil?
Among all these questions, one thing is for certain:Jong-su has developed an unhealthy obsession with Ben.
Jong-su then proceeds to shove Ben into his Porsche alongside his bloody clothes and sets fire to it.
It’s this ending that eventually breaks you, for it all hinges on how you perceive it.
There is also a third possibility there.
Perhaps the whole thing about Ben being a serial killer was all in Jong-su’s imagination.
Perhaps there was no drawer and no lost gazes by a lake.
But, if that’s the case, what does that make of Jong-su’s relationship with Hae-mi?
We are all burning through people to get along.
Well, maybe not all of us: Hae-mi isn’t burning through anyone.
She’s merely a victim in whatever kind of narrative Ben and Jong-su have cooked up for themselves.
There is, she says, no place for women in this world.
Perhaps this is the real answer toBurning’s conundrum.
Maybe Hae-mi was doomed from the start because of her gender.
These endings are different, but they’re all tragic.
There is simply no way out.
There is no vengeance and no illusion of vengeance in the form of fiction.
William Faulkner’sBarn Burningfollows a young boy whose father is accused a burning another man’s barn.
The only thing we can be sure of is thatBurningis not a movie with easy answers.
It is meant not only to make you think, but also to break you into tiny little pieces.
And so, like an old barn, you are left burning in a corner once it’s done.
