This adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s story «Barn Burning» by Korean director Lee Chang-dong won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
Jong-su, an aspiring novelist, has recently left the army and is now looking after the house of his father, who is in prison. At the market he meets his classmate Hae-mi. They spend that day and night together and then she flies to Africa, leaving Jong-su to look after her cat. Hae-mi returns with a new lover, a rich layabout called Ben. The relationship between the characters turns into a ghostly love triangle of unexpressed feelings and confessions left unsaid, but one day Hae-mi disappears and Jong-su learns that Ben’s secret hobby is burning barns.
The subject of Lee Chang-don’s thriller conceals a social commentary on the state of South Korean society. In a country where the population is a slave to credit in order to fulfil its dreams of a beautiful and carefree life, Ben hides the source of his wealth. Hae-mi disappears, and after plastic surgery old friends do not recognize her, but it is impossible to find a decent job without connections or model looks. In the same way that the farmers’ greenhouses are vulnerable to a lit match, Jong-su’s village is at risk from the city. The social content is smoothed out by the meditative rhythm of the narrative and the unexplained repetition of events that make us doubt the reality of what is happening and reinforces the premonition of a nameless tragedy.
The film will be shown in Korean and English with Russian subtitles.
Burning
Director Lee Chang-dong
South Korea, Japan, 2018. 148 min.
18+