take this pink ribbon off my eyes

Burning (2018) 
Directed by Lee Chang-dong 
Gore Lecture Series #6

I had cited Lee Chang-dong’s Burning as one of my favorite films of 2018, but I had not anticipated this rewatch to rattle me as much as it did. While Sayak Valencia’s “Gore Capitalism” remains in the forefront of my brain as I reflect on Lee’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, it’s my day-in-day-out real life that can’t help but inform so much of my reading of Burning. This is a modern masterpiece, a great work of ambiguous art on the nature of truth-telling, the fluidity of memory and perspective, and the subtle ways in which patriarchy informs all of our actions. It’s compulsory viewing.

Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) aspires to be a novelist. In the meantime, he makes ends meet doing odd jobs in the South Korean city of Paju, where he encounters an old childhood friend, Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo). These initial passages are a whirlwind of information that detail the complexities of their relationship; when they first encounter each other as adults, Jong-su doesn’t recognize Hae-mi. She casually mentions that she has plastic surgery done to look “pretty,” to which Jong-su disregards. When the two get more intimate, Hae-mi acknowledges that Jong-su once called her ugly. There’s a causal element here that doesn’t go unnoticed, but is never overtly mentioned. Like many other instances throughout Burning, this ends up being a microcosm of many of the film's cause = effect elements, where action lends itself in service of a greater metaphor. 

Take for example the fact that Hae-mi needs Jong-su to look after her cat while she travels abroad to Africa. Despite the cluttered nature of Hae-mi’s studio apartment, Jong-su never actually sees a cat residing in the apartment. Jong-su merely comes to the apartment, notices the waste the cat produces, leaves food, masterbates, and leaves. The mysterious nature of the cat, a relic of Murakami’s writing, would seemingly throw audiences off but it’s really how Jong-su operates in this tiny space that’s most telling. He treats it like his own dominion. He masterbates while looking out the window and does so with such disregard of the person who resides there that it hardly matters at all if there’s a cat or not. 

When Hae-mi returns from her trip, she brings Ben (Steven Yuen) with her. Described as a Gatsby-type, Ben’s profession is having “fun.” He’s impossibly cool, driving around in a Porsche and exuding such casual indifference to Hae-mi’s adoration. What follows can be perceived as a murder mystery but that reading resides above the epidermis of what’s really going on in Burning. The first act sets up Jong-su’s inherited misogyny, causally suggesting his perceived dominance over Hae-mi while also establishing his own troubled socioeconomic situation; he’s destitute, his father is on trial for a crime, and his identity as a “writer” is a generous descriptor at best. Ben’s appearance, however, shakes up the situation. Not only does he attract Hae-mi’s attention, but he does so as a means of exercising his class and status over Jong-su. One of the key early sequences of the film finds the three leaving dinner. Hae-mi can go with either Ben or Jong-su. The Porsche or the dilapidated pick-up truck. She doesn’t say a word and merely exchanges glaces between the two men. Jong-su relents on the prospects and Hae-mi leaves with Ben. 

In typical Murakami fashion, Hae-mi disappears. But Lee’s adaptation avoids pitfalls in Murakami’s writing by expanding on the mythos of Hae-mi’s disappearance beyond the male character(s) that fixate on her. We discover from Hae-mi’s mother that she had significant credit card debt that prevented her from coming back home. Also, we hear contrary stories about her childhood, lies or half-truths about falling into a well (another Murakami staple.) Last seen with Ben, Jong-su follows him to discover something resembling the capital T truth. But is following Ben a means to uncover the mysterious disappearance (and possible murder?) of Hae-mi for her sake or his own? 

When Hae-mi recounts her travels to Africa and encountering the Bushmen, she makes mention of their philosophy of “Great Hunger and Little Hunger.” Our concerns with class and status are at the heart of Little Hunger; to pine to be upwardly mobile, to operate within the machinery of capitalism. But Hae-mi’s concerns are of the “Great Hunger,” of a higher form of thinking that escapes the limitations of the society that keeps her subordinate. She’s experienced the limitations of “Little Hunger”, whether it be plastic surgery or maxing out her credit cards on the material. No more than 24 hours before revisiting Burning I had an argument about these very concepts, about Instagram and the vapid nature of Cancel Culture. It was infuriating. Like Hae-mi, I’ve found these diversions to offer little more than temporary reprieve from despair. On what ends up being their final night together, Jong-su, Hae-mi, and Ben are getting high on Jong-su’s farm. Hae-mi, in an act of rebellion and free-spiritedness, removes her shirt and dances as the Bushmen did in Africa. This is not met with celebration by Jong-su, but instead shame and ridicule. He calls her a whore and he never sees her again. 

In many ways, these three characters each operate within different spheres of Valencia’s polemic. One’s an adjudicator, violently exercising the values of the larger system as a means of maintaining a status quo. One’s attempting to escape that system. And another vanishes from it entirely. To speak plainly: Jong-su, Hae-mi, and Ben are all these characters throughout Burning. And the transcendental quality of Lee’s film is that, based on your experiences and purview of the world you inhabit, in the absence or surplus of prosperity you may be experiencing, your answer to who is who is subject to many revisions.