{Todd}’s review published on Letterboxd:
"I make my own offering and consume it" - Ben...what?
I know it's just selection bias but sometimes it seems like South Korea is just better than everyone else. In Burning, a man (Jongsu) meets a beautiful woman (Haemi) and they start dating. When she goes on a trip to Africa she brings back a friend named Ben... then things start to get very very weird. If my girlfriend came back from a trip to Africa with Steven Yeun you can be sure I'm not paying for dinner but Jongsu plays nice until one day Haemi disappears... What the fuck?
I don't always love long and slow movies but this is a long and slow movie that I can really appreciate. The film adds new little details every few minutes, developing the plot and characters with a measured and deliberate pace. Lee Chang-dong manages to create tension watching someone type on a computer. All the parts with the three of them together are so awkward and uncomfortable it's just fucking great but hard to watch sometimes. It takes nearly an hour and 15 minutes to understand the title and I didn't even mind.
You can engage with this story in a number of different ways and I appreciate that about the production. Even at the most superficial level this is an interesting mystery that takes you in a number of different directions. Who the fuck is this Ben guy is a fun question to ponder. On a deeper level you can examine this film for its messages about belonging, loneliness, and trust or you can look at the political implications of burning such as its statements on class inequality and the South Korean economy.
Burning is a beautiful film filled with beautiful people. On a technical level I really love the direction, aesthetic and performances. Lee Chang-dong fucking does it with the vibe of Burning. I'm especially fond of the use of lighting in this film, which always feels perfect, evoking the proper mood and setting up what the scene needs to accomplish. I really like the jazz score which gives the film a noir feel even though it's not really noir. Yoo Ah-in is perfect as the befuddled protagonist character that we live confusion through.
Sometimes when a film is great, it's just great so it's difficult to really put into words why it feels so special. Burning really hit me and I was mesmerized for the whole experience. As Ben says, "sometimes you can't see things that are too close to you" and maybe that is why I am having trouble pinpointing exactly what makes this work... I loved it too much. I think Burning is a film where everything, and I mean everythting, is done well and with purpose. It's a film that I could watch dozens of times and never quite get tired of... It's fantastic.
It's a film I like so much I can't fully understand the opposing viewpoint.