Burning (2018) Review

Burning (2018), dir. Lee Chang-Dong, was an interesting visual adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story, Barn Burning. The film follows most of the main plot points from Murakami's story: the main protagonist in the film, Lee Jong-Su, meets Shin Hae-mi, a quirky and unusual girl who is learning pantomime before going to Africa where she meets Ben, a slightly ominous and mysterious man who creates tension between Hae-mi and Jong-su. The film diverges from the novel plot-wise in several small details, from the story taking place in Korea rather than Japan, and Ben burning greenhouses instead of barns. However, these minor differences don't seem to affect the story in a meaningful way and it retains most of the same narrative structure as Murakami's story.

Unfortunately, where the film became incredibly lackluster to me, was its inability to convey the main protagonist's thoughts. In Barn Burning and most of Haruki Murakami's other pieces of writing, the narrator's meandering and sometimes seemingly pointless inner world gives his novels and short stories a specific kind of flair that seems quintessential to his style. Due to the limitations of a film format, Jong-su's thoughts and feelings are rarely voiced and instead implied through his interactions with others or other physical signs. In my opinion, this makes him seem even drier than Murakami's narrators can seem compared to the fantastical side characters they interact with. 

Another major issue with the film that I could not ignore was the obvious subtext. One of my favorite parts of Barn Burning was the completely ambiguous story details. At the end, the reader has no idea if the man from Africa really burned down a barn. We ask ourselves: did he possibly murder the woman? Did he really burn down a barn that Boku missed? Maybe he was just lying about all of it? We don't even find out what Boku does about the missing girl. The film, however, aggressively lays on the hints about Ben murdering Hae-mi. Perhaps this is just because of my prior assumption that the man in the short story murders the woman, but it felt terribly obvious in the film almost from Ben's original introduction. The scene where Jong-su confirms that Ben's new cat is Boil felt like being hit on the head with what the film had been shouting at me the entire time. 

Overall, Burning was an interesting film, but either due to it's painfully blatant "twist" or my prior reading of the source material, I found it extremely predictable and felt as though it almost treated its audience as clueless and needing of very transparent cues.

- May Painter