2018 ‘버닝’ Directed by Lee Chang-dong
Deliveryman Jongsu is out on a job when he runs into Haemi, a girl who once lived in his neighborhood. She asks if he'd mind looking after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. On her return she introduces to Jongsu an enigmatic young man named Ben, who she met during her trip. And one day Ben tells Jongsu about his most unusual hobby...
Pinehouse Film NOWFILM NHK Finecut CGV Arthouse Union Investment Partners Michigan Venture Capital Timewise Investment kth Busan Film Commission Seoul Film Commission
Ardiente, Em Chamas, 燃烧烈爱, มือเพลิง, バーニング 劇場版：2018, BURNING, Beoning, Изпепеляване, Vzplanutí, Το Παιχνίδι με τη Φωτιά, בערה, Izgaranje, Gyújtogatók, Burning - L'amore brucia, バーニング 劇場版, Degantis, Dedzinasana, Płomienie, În flãcãri, Пылающий, Bränd, Şüphe, Спалення, Thiêu Đốt (Burning), 燃烧, 燒失樂園, 燃燒烈愛
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France
Festival de Cannes
USANR
Fantastic Fest
Brazil
São Paulo International Film Festival
Brazil
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
Turkey
USAR
South Korea18
Russian Federation18+
FranceU
Netherlands16
Israel
Spain12
Brazil16
Denmark15
GreeceΚ-15
Turkey
Sweden
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ItalyT
USANR
Netherlands16
USA
Greece
Brazil
Denmark
France
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Greece
Israel
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Portugal
Russian Federation
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USA
I watched this, The Favourite, At Eternity’s Gate, and fucking The House That Jack Built all in one week. I need to get my ass to the AMC and see Ralph Breaks the Internet or something because I can’t do this heavy shit anymore.
“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark
I've grown impatient with this sort of formally precise, vaguely genre-inflected stuff all loaded with signifiers about thwarted masculinity and socioeconomic struggle, as if the occasional grace notes like a sunset dance add some layer of class to the thriller stuff, or as if hearing Trump on the radio and setting this near the North Korean border makes it remarkably political. Is this a pensive, deliberately paced exercise in suspense, ambiguity, and modernity or a 2 1/2 hour slog about a dork who takes out his frustrations on a bully? Does it matter?
Lee Chang-dong is one of my favorite directors. He never disappoints.
This is definitely one of the year's best. All three leads are wonderful.
Always impressed by Lee's focus on the minutia and his ability to cover scenes in ways you've never seen before.
And I know I sound like a broken record but I wish he shot this on film... although I'm not sure if he would have been able to capture the twilight like he did with digital.
Watched at the Vancouver International Film Centre.
“People’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.” (Haruki Murakami)
An invisible tangerine is peeled, the key is to forget that it's not there. Stories are told through nebulous smoke. A naked body’s incinerated with orange hues fuming the air, and the echoes of bated breaths have remained deep in the bones. Burning revolves around a poor country boy Lee Jong-su, who claimed to be a writer yet hardly do we ever see him write. Maybe claiming for a lack of inspiration is a passable excuse but really, to him, the world is an entangled mess or more like a great enigma that could never fit within his personal peace of mind. One day he accidentally meets…
Beautiful cinematography and a great performance from Steven Yeun can't prevent this from being needlessly cumbersome and thoroughly exhausting to sit through. Strip away the pretty window dressing and arthouse veneer and you'll find a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, rote explorations of masculinity, and a lead character who is as blank of a slate as there can be — the last point is particularly problematic when your film is two and a half hours long. None of this outside of Yeun's character is interesting at all, and the occasionally obnoxious script says nothing of substance while trying to get you to believe it's deep. I just don't care about the lead or his problems, and the film doesn't do anything in the way of development to alleviate that. The climax veers on laughable as a result. Enough with these "tortured" piece of shit male protagonists already.
Probably the best poster of the year, though.
GRADE: C
