Kubrick Rubric Ratings: So, I Have Some 'Burning' Questions.

 

Two nights ago, I watched Lee Chang-Dong's 2018 Korean mystery-thriller Burning for the first time. I watched all two and a half hours of it, and then I went to sleep. Yesterday, I woke up, made myself breakfast, watched some football, listened to a podcast about the movie, read a dozen articles about the movie, and then rewatched it. All two and a half hours of it. This morning I woke up and read the Haruki Murakami story the movie is based on, then I read the William Faulkner story that Murakami's story is based on. Writing this is nothing more than a tactic to stop myself from watching it yet again. Because even after a weekend dedicated to this film, I am still far from understanding it, far from figuring out the mystery of it all.

On its face, Burning is a two-part movie. The first half is about a simple love triangle between an aspiring writer named Jong-su (played by Ah-In Yoo), his childhood neighbor, Hai-me (played by the wonderfully captivating Jong-seo Jun), and her new boyfriend, the rich and mysterious Ben (played by The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun). Then, about half way through the movie, Hai-me vanishes, and Jong-su is left with nothing more than an eerie, nondescript phone call and the suspicion that Ben had something to do with it. But Burning isn't Teen Wolf. You can't just take it at face value. This is a film where every detail is painstakingly planned out, every scene serves the larger metaphor, and every mystery has a dozen possible solutions. It is somehow simultaneously one of the most rewarding movies I've ever watched and one of the least satisfying. Burning doesn't pander to its audience, rather it expects its audience to pander to it. So, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

-LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD-

I don't want to do a deep-dive on this movie the way I did with Whiplash or Contagion simply for the reason that if you're reading this without having seen the movie, I don't want it totally ruined for you. And if you have seen the movie, I'm sure you'll agree it's too good to let me spoil it. Instead, I'm going to talk about some of the many reasons I find this movie beautiful and compelling enough to dedicate the better part of three days to it.

One of the keys to understanding this movie (of which there are many) comes early in the film when Jong-su and Hai-me are out getting drinks together. While they're drinking, Hai-me begins to pantomime peeling and eating tangerines in great detail. She takes the imaginary tangerines out of their box, peels them, takes a slice and puts it in her mouth, chews methodically, then removes the seeds from her mouth, and puts them in an imaginary bowl to her right. Jong-su watches mesmerized.

"That's good. You're talented," Jong-su comments.

"This has nothing to do with talent," Hai-me replies. "This is how it works. Don't think the tangerine is here. Just forget that there isn't one. That's the key."

The scene, innocuous upon first viewing, actually serves the larger mystery of the film, because after Hai-me goes missing, we follow Jong-su's in search of a reason she's disappeared. We start to patch together all sorts of little clues, focus on irrelevant details, and project our own motives on to Jong-su's suspect, Ben. While in reality, the movie never gives us a definitive explanation to her disappearance, we leave the film with our own solution, as does Jong-su. What makes the pantomime scene so special, is that it's telling you not to do that. It's suggesting that maybe this movie isn't a mystery after all. Maybe there is no larger plot. Maybe there is no motive. If you want to have a grasp on the mystery at the heart of this movie, don't focus on the solution. Forget that there isn't one. As Hai-me says, "That's the key."

Hai-me with her tasty invisible tangerine.

Burning is littered with scenes like this - scenes that work independently within the plot, but are actually meant to drive at the many metaphors contained within the movie. And there are so many metaphors. There is the obvious underlying metaphor: rich versus poor. Ben is rich. The "Great Gatsby" as he is referred to. Ben doesn't seem to work for a living, and he himself admits that he doesn't work but instead he "plays." On the other hand, Jong-su is left soley with the responsibility of maintaining his family's farm after his father, a hot-head, is arrested for injuring a government official during an argument. And in between the two is Hai-me, who comes from the same small farm town as Jong-su, but seeks to live a life beyond her means. She travels abroad, maxes out her credit cards, and seems to have no desire to hold down a job.

Then there's the theme of toxic masculinity, and I want to spend a few minutes on this one. Toxic masculinity is not new to film. Just as it is everywhere in everyday life, it has permeated the entertainment industry. However, it isn't often that a movie that bathes in toxic masculinity is actually examining the concept itself. It isn't like Goodfellas is actually a nuanced take on how awful men are and how women are used as nothing more than pawns. No, in Goodfellas men are just awful and women are used as nothing more than pawns. Plain and simple. But in Burning, the opposite is true. It'd be easy to dismiss Hai-me's character as a manic pixie dream girl stereotype, when in fact, she's the most important character in the movie. And it'd be even easier to see this movie as just another love triangle where the "inferior" man is jealous of the "superior" man. But it's important to recognize that that isn't the case here. Instead, you have two very different men who serve as different models of masculinity. Despite the mystique that enshrouds Ben, the type of masculinity he represents is fairly straight forward: He's a sociopath with a God complex who sees women as toys. (Don't worry, that isn't a spoiler. You need only to see Steven Yeun's smug face for 4.5 seconds to realize that.) The other man, Jong-su, represents a more complex indictment of toxic masculinity: He begins as the guy who acts too cool to be in love with Hai-me, but as the story progresses, he gets more in touch with his feelings. And, in one of my favorite developments in the film, he does everything in his power to avoid becoming the man he's seen his father become. The ending of this movie is up for interpretation (as is pretty much all of it) but I'd say that Jong-su actually avoids a descent into dangerous masculinity, rather than what is suggested - that he is just another angry product of a cruel world like his father. In my opinion, it's a rather astounding juxtaposition, and the fact that it isn't even the central focus of the movie makes it that much more impressive.

Finally, there's the titular metaphor of burning, which begins to come into the play in my favorite scene of the movie:

"Sometimes I burn down greenhouses." I'll never forget that line, not just because it's so to the point, but because of the way Steven Yeun says it. He whispers it with a smile, as if he's divulging his proudest secret without a care in the world. The entire movie hinges on this scene. This is where the movie stops becoming a love triangle drama and begins to become a murder-mystery. I'll spare you the spoilers of why I love this scene and its overall importance, but please note how well made it is. If nothing else, this scene is an absolutely phenomenal piece of writing. 

At the end of the day, that's what makes this movie special. It's the little details that make the movie so entrancing. The script is tight and perfectly executed. The cinematography possesses a rare beauty that makes it difficult to look away from the screen. The film's music makes nerve-wracking scenes that much more thrilling, while its interspersed silence make the visuals jump off the screen. And, of course, there's the acting. (Buckle up, here comes another Kate Winslet-style monologue against the Oscars.) 

It is an absolute travesty - I repeat TRAVESTY - Steven Yeun didn't get major accolades for this movie. The Oscar nominees for Best Supporting Actor in 2019 were Sam Elliott in A Star is Born (no), Adam Driver in BlacKkKlansman (no), Richard Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? (which I haven't seen, but since he didn't win I'm gonna go with no), Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush in Vice (honestly, he probably should have won, but he's still much worse than Steven Yeun), and the eventual winner, Mahershala Ali for Green Book. I don't want to turn this blog into a blog about all the reasons I really did not enjoy Green Book, so I'll leave you with this: Ali doesn't even want this Oscar. Like literally, he says if he could go back and do it again, he would not only refuse to accept the award, he would refuse to make the movie all together. Need I say more? Pencil Steven Yeun in for the 2019 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He 1000% deserves it.

But aside from Yeun's acting and all the other aforementioned praise, the reason I'm giving this movie such a high score is because at no point do I feel smarter than the film maker. I always feel like the movie is two steps ahead of me, covering its bases so that I'll never fully grasp its complexities and never fully unravel its mysteries. Some films I'll never understand, not because they're well made but because they aren't. Burning isn't one of those. I've seen two dozen different interpretations of the movie and yet not a single one of them fully solves for every little question in this movie. And that is a sign of a brilliant film maker. In just two and a half hours, Lee Chang-Dong was able to capture all of the little inconsistencies of the world and spin them into a mystery larger than we or the characters are able to solve. 

So, yes, to some degree I'm left unsatisfied by Burning. I'm left unsatisfied with my ability to solve such a great and multilayered puzzle. But, more than that, I'm left in awe of the wonderous portraits Chang-Dong was able to paint on screen, the mysteries he so masterfully lays out without answering, and the metaphors that go deeper than most movies would ever dare dive. Burning is at once the envy of writers' eyes and a treasure trove of cinema's most cherished technical aspects, which means to watch it (and to rewatch it) is endlessly rewarding, even if it leaves you yearning for more.

"Sometimes I burn down greenhouses."

Burning KRR: 9.3/10