"There Is No Right Or Wrong. Just The Morals Of Nature..."
Presenting itself as arguably one of the more difficult movies to seek out throughout the year thus far due to a disgracefully minimal big screen release, Burning, the latest from acclaimed South Korean director, Lee Chang-dong, is undoubtedly the type of movie worth travelling that extra few miles for in order to behold and breathe in. Based on the story, "Barn Burning" published in 1992 by Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, Chang-dong's movie is a tense, taut and superbly crafted psychological thriller which sees Yoo Ah-in as Lee Jong-su, a rather reserved and emotionally conflicted package courier who amidst dealing with his father's newly found criminal exploits, begins to form a relationship with Jeon Jong-seo's Shin Hae-mi, a former childhood neighbour and school acquaintance who on first glance, Lee fails to recognise due to Hae-mi's admittance at undergoing plastic surgery in order to appear more attractive to the male gaze. As the relationship between the two begins to blossom, to the extent that Lee is left with the responsibility of caring for Hae-mi's rather unsociable feline friend as she disappears on a trip to Africa, her return from her spiritual adventure sees her arrive back with Steven Yeun's (The Walking Dead) Ben, a handsome, rich figure of ambiguity who soon begins to drive a creep-sized wedge between Hae-mi and Lee's relationship, much to the jealous and judgemental eye of the former who begins to suspect that Ben's secretive demeanour is much more dangerous than his charming sensibility makes out.
Whilst the clearest narrative connections at the heart of Burning immediately point to the works of Hitchcock, with the notion of the uncertain outsider within cinema always harking back to the likes of A Shadow of a Doubt, the near two and a half hour runtime clearly emphasises Chang-dong's philosophy that amidst the central story, the tone and feel of the movie is as equally important, if not more so. With an abundance of interesting character development which manages to clearly identify each of the very different triage of leading characters, the atmosphere which idles in the background of the movie as the drama develops oodles with a subversive sense of strangeness, with you never really sure whether certain behavioural oddities or baffling character interactions are meant to be taken literally, as a deft aside or part of a wider mystery. With a very minimal reliance on musical accompaniments and the strange, ever-shifting colours of Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography in which the movie seems to traverse through from the urban brightness of daytime South Korea to the Nordic Noir feel of night, Burning's clearest elemental ideas regarding the aspect of loneliness, longing and jealousy are all actively heightened with an alarming slow-burn nature, resulting in a final act which seems to take pleasure in failing to offer the audience a crowd-pleasingly satisfying, well rounded resolution, instead actively encouraging audiences to make up their own minds just like a huge percentage of the the most impactful and memorable chillers always manage to do. Add into the mix a hallucinatory dance sequence which clearly evoked the works of David Lynch and an underlying comment on the societal state of North Korea, Burning is an endlessly compelling thriller with style to burn and still has me dissecting certain elements in order to figure out exactly what it all meant. Crucial viewing.
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