Lee Chang-dong's Burning is an odd beast, starting out with quite broad strokes that somehow blend into something perversely opaque when the credits roll.
Our protagonist is the slack jawed Jong-su, an oddly blank cypher who is, incomprehensibly, pursued by manic-pixie-dreamgirl Hae-Mi at the film's opening. She provides him with a series of cod-philosophical statements and introduces us to the re-iterated thesis statement of the film: pretending something is real is not the same as forgetting it is not.
More plot machinations, a potentially real cat and we are introduced to Ben, a sneering cartoon of indifferent evil who instantly flaunts his psychopathy. We are set for our love triangle and the journey of the honorable, simple man learning to stand up for himself and others against the indifferent forces of capitalism and, finally, to be seen as worthy in the eyes of the woman he loves.
Only that singularly fails to happen.
Hae-mi becomes our manic-depressive-pixie-dreamgirl, the quirky, cosmetic flaws resolving as deep cracks in her psyche.
Ben is set up as the riddle at the center this mystery, but his sinister affect never quite tips the scales of an resolution and the whole thing ends up wrapped in the enigma of Jong-su. Cleaning a near empty barn, writing an empty book, searching for a possible well.
I kept expecting a twist, I was looking for some obvious re framing of reality: He's not real. She's not real. It's all a dream or a game or... he's a horcrux.
It never comes.
Instead we get a tantalizing glimpse of something almost Lovecraftian, cold and distant, perhaps quantum, observation as action and cats that flitter in and out of the concrete. I kept expecting to get the rug pulled, looking for the trick, only to find instead that the rug remained stable while the floor became a nine dimensional quicksand beneath it.
Verdict: 5 ambiguous cates
