Review of Burning / 버닝, directed by Lee Chang-dong

I was a freshman in college when I ventured out to Quad Cinema in the Village, in the depths of New York City, to go see Burning for the first time. I had purchased a ticket immediately when I saw the movie was coming to the United States, then walked about thirty minutes from my dorm room in Chelsea all the way south. I had previously tried to get a ticket at the NYFF, but failed as it had sold out immediately.

When I had bought the ticket, I had an idea of what to expect, but in this tiny movie theater that wasn’t sold out, seating about twenty-five people max, I was in awe at what I was watching on the screen. Then, at the end, Steven Yeun showed up and gave a small talk and Q&A about the film.

This led to one of my core memories, which is Yeun and I walking up to the door at the same time to get out of the theater and doing that little awkward dance of “you go first.” I ended up going first, then we ended up going the same way on the sidewalk, which I quickened my pace.

It’s my one face palm moment that was the beginning of many during my time in New York, and I can somehow never forget it.

Anyways, I’ve rambled enough. Here’s my review of Burning.

A young writer finds himself getting caught in a mysterious love triangle.

The main character of the film, Lee Jong-su, is just getting by with random jobs. He’s an aspiring writer, but he’s also stuck in the city of Paju, which is north of Seoul. It’s a rural countryside city that ends up right on the border of North Korea, so when you sometimes listen hard enough, you can hear the sirens and announcements from North Korea.

One day things are about to completely change for Jong-su, as while he’s doing a delivery, he stumbles upon a bunch of shop girls dancing for a raffle prize. One of the girls, Shin Hae-mi, is his childhood neighbor and classmate. At first he does not recognize her, and when he ends up in front of her, she reveals that she got plastic surgery.

During this little reunion, Hae-mi asks Jong-su to feed her cat Boil. She lives alone in a small apartment, and she’s about to head off on a random trip to Africa. Jong-su, because he’s already kind of whipped for her, agrees. But before she heads off, the two end up having sex.

When Jong-su returns back to Paju, his father is revealed to be going to court. Each day Jong-su ventures out into her apartment, and although he isn’t sure at first there is a cat, he becomes convinced when he finds poop in the litter box. But when he enters the apartment, he starts to masturbate in there, which is really weird but on-brand.

Hae-mi calls him one day, revealing that she was stranded at the airport after a bombing in Kenya. Jong-su, being the smitten little puppy he is, goes to Incheon to pick her up, but when she ventures out into the waiting area with her stuff, she reveals a new friend she made: Ben.

Ben is strange to Jong-su immediately, and a threat. He speaks Korean weirdly, and that’s something that’s intentionally done (but also because Yeun can’t speak Korean that well—he told us during the Q&A he’s not fluent, and Lee Chang-dong ended up using this to make Ben more unsettling with his speech manner) to make his character seem off.

They end up going to dinner, where Hae-mi pretty much admits she’s searching for a purpose, which is a indicator of the big fire monologue she has. Hae-mi is depicted as a flighty woman who wants to do things that will give her a purpose, hence the entire Africa trip.

The three end up going to Jong-su’s place to smoke and watch the sunset after the dinner, where Jong-su begins to become more unsettled by Ben. Ben’s got some strange undertones in his blanket statements, and as the two men watch Hae-mi dance topless in the sunset—which is an absolutely stunning scene to watch on a big screen—it establishes that she will be the sole variable in their relationship and a defining one.

During this scene Ben makes a confession about greenhouses: he says he burns one down every so often, specifically every two months. Jong-su finds this strange, and he asks him when the next burning will be. Ben cryptically replies that it will be very soon.

The trio continues to hang out because Hae-mi invites Jong-su to things she does with Ben. It becomes apparent that Ben is wealthy, as during one scene they meet some of his comrades who make fun of Hae-mi for her beliefs and nature. Ben also laughs, which pisses Jong-su off.

Jong-su continues to run each day and makes a map of all the greenhouses in the area.

He realizes that none of them have burned down yet, but things become complicated when Hae-mi disappears. She had made a random call to him one night that is concerning because there were only noises, then it cut off. Jong-su continues to call and realizes that she never picks up, and when her phone is disconnected, he ends up coming to her apartment.

It’s too neat, the suitcase gone, everything in order—the exact opposite of when he came to feed her cat.

But when Jong-su spots Ben, he’s with another woman. Ben admits he burned down a greenhouse right near Jong-su, which casts the suspicion of Hae-mi’s disappearance on him. It’s very ambiguous here—he could have taken advantage of Hae-mi and killed her, but with the story set up, she could have also went and started over.

Ben also mentions that Jong-su was the only person Hae-mi trusted, which made him jealous.

Jong-su finds Ben’s place, and Ben, realizing he is there invites him in. When snooping in the bathroom, Jong-su finds the pink watch he had won in the raffle earlier in the film, when he first met Hae-mi again for the first time in a while.

The cat, which Ben says he adopted, Jong-su realizes that it might be Boil. When the cat runs outside and Jong-su tries to get it back, it responds to Boil. That makes Jong-su lure Ben out to his home in the countryside, where he stabs him to death and then lights the car on fire.

Overall Thoughts

This is a film that doesn’t give a lot of answers, and I think audiences could be wondering if Ben did actually kill Hae-mi.

The evidence adds up that he did do it, and that’s what I personally believe from my analysis and many rewatches of the film, but I think there could be an argument still that she simply left everything behind.

But regardless, there’s so much packed into this film that you could spend quite a bit of time sitting down and breaking it down. Not only are the greenhouse mentions one of the biggest things about fire, but there are other references—the great big hunger, like flame, that Hae-mi admires, or how the cat is named Boil.

Lee Chang-dong is a genius when it comes to the work he puts out into the world, and he’s my favorite director for a reason. Give this one a watch if you haven’t already.

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