Lee Chang-Dong’s BURNING, PARASITE’s feverish cousin, goes a step further.
“Day after day I produce rien — nothingness.”
Japanese bestseller Haruki Murakami has attributed this quote to the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy twice in his work, including his most recent novel Killing Commendatore. And it is the state that Lee Jung Soo finds himself in at the beginning of Burning, Lee Chang Dong’s adaptation of Murakami’s short story of the same name.
Jung Soo, an aspiring novelist who works odd jobs to pay rent, wallows in nothingness until an unfamiliar voice calls out to him. The face of the person saying his name is equally unfamiliar. Her name is Shin Hae Mi, a neighbor and classmate from his childhood who is unrecognizable after plastic surgery. The opening act is a slow burn — no pun intended — as Jung Soo and Hae Mi reconnect and ultimately have sex before she leaves for Africa. Though slow, this stretch feels essential and wonderfully crafted in retrospect once the story’s central mystery is clear.
Hae Mi returns from Africa with a wealthy man named Ben, played by Walking Dead alumnus Steven Yeun. Just as in the original short story with its Japanese counterparts, the subsequent interactions between Jung Soo, Hae Mi and Ben make us wonder if barns were actually burnt. The difference in Lee Chang Dong’s adaptation is that the mystery’s dangerous implications are much clearer. The violence in a Murakami novel is usually emotional or spiritual, in a world apart from ours, hidden in the corners of existence that we usually ignore. In Burning, Lee Chang Dong rewrites the conclusion of what would otherwise be a typical Murakami story, making the violence all too real.
Despite this deviation from Murakami’s style, one can imagine an alternate universe where Burning had the fairy tale run in 2018 that Parasite had in 2019. Lee Chang Dong’s film touches similar themes as Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar winner and had the advantage of both Haruki Murakami’s popularity in the West and what characterizes most of his work: an enigmatic millionaire, a mysterious well, a protagonist experiencing Kafka-esque loneliness. It even boasted a recognizable face to Western viewers with Steven Yeun. Yet its impact was mostly limited to the words of critics and Korean film neophytes, even after it was released on Netflix. Several notable critics listed it as the best film of 2018, such as Justin Chang from the LA Times, and Mahnola Dargis from The New York Times ranked it second. South Korea selected Burning as its entry into the Academy Award’s Best Foreign Language Film category but it failed to receive a nomination.
So why didn’t it catch on with Western viewers? It could be its length, though it’s only 15 minutes longer than Parasite, or its pace. Another possibility is that it was simply a victim of being first. Though it wasn’t selected for the Oscars, it was the first South Korean film to even reach the shortlist of nine films for the Best Foreign Language Film Award. It’s not a stretch to think that Burning may have paved the road for Parasite’s success with critics and Academy voters. The easiest answer is that Bong Joon Ho already had a much bigger following in the U.S., especially after films like Snowpiercer and Okja. But I would like to add one more possibility: Burning is a much more uncomfortable viewing experience.
Parasite disarms us with satire and the absurd. The story ends and we know what to think of all the characters. By the time we see Burning’s credits, we are only left with actions and their consequences, with more mysteries than what we started with, and very little explanations. We ask ourselves about the unsolved threads of the plot and much more. How calculated is the subjugation of the poor by the wealthy? Who exactly is complicit in creating these juxtaposed realities? Is violence justified? These and other complicated questions are more critical now than ever. And their answers don’t lie within the movie but within the world around us. While Parasite served to remind us of the importance of these questions, Burning wants us to actively participate in answering them.
