The Burning Question
Lee Chang-dong’s Korean Film ‘Burning’ (2018) Based on a Story by Haruki Murakami
Lee Chang-dong’s Burning is one of the best films of 2018. It won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes but didn’t get nominated for Oscar 2019. Lee has already established himself as one of the leading filmmakers in world cinema today with outstanding films such as Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007) and Poetry (2010) in his oeuvre. Burning is a thriller based on the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s mysterious short story ‘Barn Burning’, a title drawn from a different story by William Faulkner. The first-person narrator of Murakami’s tale is obsessed with the shocking revelation, of burning other people’s barns, made by the wealthy boyfriend of a girl known to him. The narrator goes about checking all the barns in his neighbourhood and he is puzzled to find all of them intact. The idea of burning barns impacts him so much that after waiting for it to happen for long, he is even driven to set fire to a barn but restrains himself. To add to the mystery, the girl vanishes into thin air.
Changes and additions made to the Murakami story
Lee does away with the first-person narration although we still view the film essentially from the point of view of the protagonist. Lee Jong-su, the protagonist is unmarried and much younger than the narrator in the Murakami story, and he is in love with the girl Shin Hae-mi. The protagonist’s family details have been added in the film. After bumping into Hae-mi, Jong-su has to move from the city, Seoul, to his native place Paju close to the North Korean border to take care of the cow in the absence of his father who has gone to jail for a minor offence. Another important addition is that Jong-su is a writer who is observing and trying to understand the world in pursuit of his first novel. The amoral “arsonist”, named Ben in the film, lives in Gangnam, the Beverly Hills of South Korea. The class difference between Jong-su & Ben is stressed. Jong-su’s love for Hae-mi makes the film a triangle. Barn burning is changed to burning greenhouses as they are large in number in Korea and visually striking.
Apart from the talk of greenhouse burning, fire recurs in the film as a motif. Hae-mi narrates the dancing around the bonfire by the Kalahari Bushmen. Jong-su remembers setting his mother’s clothes to fire after she left the family when he was a young boy. There are additional details that add to the mystery. Hae-mi assigns the job of feeding her cat, named Boil, before leaving for Kenya. Jong-su is unable to see Boil whenever he goes to clean up and leave food. He keeps getting phone calls but they get disconnected the moment he answers them. As things get more and more enigmatic, Jong-su goes beyond the narrator in Murakami story and starts stalking Ben.
How Lee differs from Murakami
Here is where the film differs from the Murakami story. Lee’s interest lies in the way Jong-su perceives reality in contrast with the way Hae-mi sees it. When Jong-su tells Hae-mi that he has to get back to his village as there is some problem, she is not interested in asking him about it. As a learner of pantomime, she dwells in her imagination rather than observing the reality and analysing it. When Jong-su asks her why Ben is after her, she says that Ben likes people like her. She seems to pay the price for her naivete. Jeon Jong-seo in her debut performance exudes vivacity in the role of Hae-mi. On the other hand, Jong-su, played with dreamy eyes by Yoo Ah-in, is the budding writer who observes reality and tries to fathom it. He wants to get to the bottom of things, so he has to investigate whether there was a well near Hae-mi’s house as claimed by her. He obsessively chases Ben’s Porsche in his old pickup truck to unravel the mystery of not finding any greenhouse burnt. At some point he appears to connect the dots and understand the metaphor of greenhouse burning. But his observations and analysis, while helping him to unravel the mystery, make him resemble his father whom he hates. Ben easily snatches the girl Jong-su is in love with. When Jong-su seems to unearth what must have happened to Hae-mi, he gets into a rage leading to a tragic end. It is as though either extremes (analysing reality or not) can make you lose out.
The unusual characterization of Ben
Lee Chang-dong has already shown that he is not an ordinary director by the way he portrays the kidnapper, extortionist and murderer of a young boy in his earlier film, Secret Sunshine. When the boy’s mother goes to see him in the prison to forgive him, he looks cheerful and tells her that God has absolved him of his sins. The depiction of the central character in Oasis too is extra ordinary. In Burning Steven Yeun, apt choice for the role of Ben, delivers an excellent performance. The film doesn’t provide any insight into Ben’s character as we see him only through the eyes of Jong-su who is surprised how he is able to live such a life at a young age. Jong-su calls Ben the Great Gatsby referring to the mysterious multi-millionaire in the Scott Fitzgerald novel by the same name. He wonders what Ben does to make him so rich. All the same Jong-su finds Ben sporting a smiling face, always welcoming him and being nice to him. Jong-su notices Ben yawning even while hanging out with his friends. The reality Ben sees appears to be boring so he has to make things interesting for him. Ben claims to set fire to greenhouses and it makes him feel euphoric to look at them burning. He justifies it by giving the example of people getting swept away when there is flood. There is no right or wrong in it as it is the morality of nature he says. The degree of ambiguity in whether Ben has done the dastardly act is somewhat less in the film compared to the Murakami story but the impact of Ben on Jong-su is much more.
Comparison with ‘Poetry’
It is interesting to compare the way the characters in Burning perceive reality with the way the protagonist in Lee’s Poetry — an old lady — sees it. In the process of observing reality to find beauty, she becomes empathetic to the girl who is wronged and her mother. In the end the protagonist takes an ethical approach that leads to right action.
How does it fare?
The cinematography (DP: Hong Kyung-pyo) in Burning is far superior to Lee’s earlier films. The scene in which Jong-su, Hae-mi and Ben get stoned at Jong-su’s place in Paju has been superbly shot in twilight with the Miles Davis’ historic trumpet music from Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (1958) playing on the soundtrack. Ben’s Porsche contrasts with Jong-su’s battered pickup. This is a crucial scene in which Ben makes his revelation about barn barning. Hae-mi is shown in silhouette in an excellent shot in this scene. However, Oasis and Poetry have endings that take the films to another level. Although Burning doesn’t reach the heights of some of Lee’s earlier work, it is haunting and ranks among the best films of 2018.
