Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) would feel at home in a Haruki Murakami novel. He’s young, lonely, talks less, harbours vague discontent – someone who has shrunk into himself. A creative writing graduate, Jong-su wants to become a novelist but currently does odd jobs. One day he meets his high school acquaintance, Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo). They spend some time together – long enough for him to think that they’re dating. Soon Hae-mi leaves for a trip to Africa and asks Jong-su to look after her cat. He finds out that there’s no cat and when Hae-mi returns, she has a new boyfriend: a suave, rich man called Ben. And then, things start getting weird.
Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, adapted from Barn Burning, a Murakami short story, is just sufficiently off-kilter to sustain constant intrigue. A quiet, subdued presence, Jong-su reveals little about himself. We know all the surface details about him, but what he thinks, or what he feels, we’ve no idea. He guards his face like a frontier, giving nothing away. Then there’s Hae-mi, the exact embodiment of somebody “who is out there”. Chirpy and cheerful, she never runs out of things to say or feelings to describe. Ben, on the other hand, is eerily similar to Jong-su. If the aspiring novelist is about what he lacks, then Ben, in the “import-export business”, is about what he has. Turns out, plenty: a German sports car, a luxurious apartment in a tony neighbourhood, enough money to frequent upscale restaurants. But beyond that, Ben, a “Gatsby-like figure”, is opaque.
The bare bones of the story is intriguing in itself, but Chang-dong’s main interests lie elsewhere. Barn Burning is a 4,970 word-story that could have, at the most, yielded a 20-minute short; Burning slow burns at 148 minutes. Chang-dong has used Murakami’s story as a gateway to enter richer and more complex worlds.
Some scenes from the story do find their way into the film – at times, with the same dialogues – yet there are several and significant departures. Murakami’s story, seen through a stoic everyman’s point of view, reads like a character study of an enigmatic stranger. The setting is irrelevant. Chang-dong’s movie, set in Seoul, is specific to South Korea and hints at close, intricate ties between the characters and their country. These people are also defined by their privilege and social currency, and the film devotes a significant runtime exploring that divide.
Jong-su, for instance, the son of a farmer, doing part-time jobs, belongs to the working class. He lives in an old, inherited house in the countryside. Hae-mi’s dwelling is even more modest and cramped – a one-room studio struggling for breath. Unlike Jong-su and Ben, she lacks both financial and cultural capital. (At one point, she asks, “What is a metaphor?”) While hanging out with Ben’s elite friends, Hae-mi is primarily a source of amusement – often at her own expense. They slyly make fun of, and judge, her; she’s unaware.
Ben, on the other hand, lives in a house so ordered and plush – the lighting is soft, the interiors are elegant, the bath towels are neatly stacked – that it resembles a hotel. He doesn’t enter Jong-su’s life as much as he intrudes in it. Everything about Ben signals foreign: his car, his wardrobe, his lifestyle, even his name. More than being modern, he is Western. And when he reveals a particularly vicious hobby of his, as a matter of fact, we see his untrammelled desire and recognise the strains of that dominance, one that is typically exhibited by countries than people. It is perhaps no coincidence that Jong-su lives close to the North Korea border and, at the start of the film, a news channel shows a clip of Donald Trump’s speech. Ben is always squishing Jong-su for (metaphorical) space, making him uneasy, cornering him to question his identity.
The symbolic meanings, though, never interfere with the film’s narrative – it can be easily enjoyed as a drama about young South Koreans understanding their dilemmas and ambitions. Besides, Burning changes character with ease, first unfolding as a breezy film about new love, then becoming a slow burn hiding secrets aplenty, and finally culminating in a racy thriller. Chang-dong manages to find the right mood and pace at nearly all times – in fact, you can count the number of scenes where the drama feels stretched. Burning’s only glaring flaw comes in its final few minutes, where the plot is desperately racing towards a definite conclusion, contradicting and confining the film’s free, shape-shifting spirit.
A perfect example of that comes towards the halfway mark, where the trio has just drank beer and smoked a joint. Hae-mi and Jong-su, not used to marijuana, are laughing without reason. Ben is stone-faced. It is evening; the sky is about to shed its inhibition. The air is filled with jazz and sounds from a North Korean radio station. The frame contains three people and infinite possibilities. There’s love, a lot of longing, and an inexplicable sense of danger. In this moment, everything – and nothing – is possible. And then Hae-mi gets up, takes her top off, and starts swaying. The camera and the two men just observe. This scene, much like the rest of the film, looks serene on the surface but conceals a torrent of grievances and discomfort. Chang-dong seems to be telling us, “Don’t get fooled by the appearances. One of these days, we won’t be able to control what we hide.”