Burning: Haunting with unanswered questions

In the 2018 Korean film, Burning, a guest character says it is “No country for women”, alluding to the societal pressures faced by women. It also refers to what lies at the heart of this fascinating film. A young girl who mysteriously disappears one day, leading to a series of events that end in an unexpected conclusion.

By the looks of it, Burning has all the strands of a Haruki Murakami short-story, on which it is actually based. But like many of Murakami’s works, the story called Barn Burning, is a focused exploration of surreal human journeys, that illuminate as much as they mystify. His stories rarely, if ever, are an active commentary on socio-economic situations in which the characters exist.

Burning, on the other hand, not just moves Murakami’s original story from his favoured city, Tokyo, to the South Korean capital, Seoul; it also adds layer upon layer of context to it. I think of it as a cross between Murakami and this year’s Oscar winner, Parasite. Interestingly, it was the first Korean film to make it to the list of nine-finalists in the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars. Much like Parasite, Burning looks at uncomfortable class differences with an unrelenting gaze. It too is from the perspective of the underclass, with a take on youth unemployment and gender driven challenges.

 
The protagonist, Lee Jong-su is a young, struggling writer who has to move back to his hometown after his father, who lived there alone, cannot do so anymore. His childhood acquaintance, Hae-mi, who he meets shortly before that in Seoul, is the only other character he is shown to know so far. She is a struggling model who starts seeing a polished, well-off man named Ben, with an ambiguous source of income.

The movie really takes off after Hae-mi goes missing, sending Jong-su on a journey determined to find out where she is and what happened, suspecting Ben of having a hand in it.His ideas are coloured by his own struggles, experiences and feelings for Hae-mi even as she chose quite another partner. To this extent, the movie reminded me of yet another Korean film called Memories of Murder. Also directed by Bong Joon Ho, many years before Parasite, the film is also an exploration of what happens in the minds of, in that case police investigators, when trying to solve a mystery.

Burning leaves the viewer with a whole lot to think about, not the least of which is the arbitrariness of life and death. I was also intrigued by the film’s context and what it says about Korea but that would risk running it into yet another commentary on economics, which merits a totally new post. In fact, there’s so much to this film that I think it can do with a few more pieces. It is available in the UK on Amazon Prime for either rent or purchase.