Layers of Ambiguity Fuel The Beautifully Filmed Thriller Burning (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS BELOW

Director Lee Chang-dong's newest motion picture Burning is a thriller, but it takes a little bit of time before it reveals itself as just that. At first, the audience is just following around aspiring writer Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) as he putters around in his day-to-day life doing deliveries to earn money as he tries nearly everything, including getting his neighbors to sign a petition, to ensure that his violent father doesn't get a harsh prison sentence. While going about his life, he runs into childhood friend Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) for the first time in ages. The two promptly go out for dinner where Shin reveals that she's about to go to Africa as part of her desire to fulfill her Big Hunger, a term meant to refer to a persons desire to find out their purpose in the universe. 

The dinner goes well enough that Lee becomes smitten with Shin, a feeling that gets challenged once Shin returns from her trip with Ben (Steven Yeun), a guy who never sits right with Lee. Ben is basically everything Lee wishes he could be, rich, incredibly handsome (he is played by Steven Yeun after all!), confident, Ben is basically the Stefan Urquelle to Lee's Steve Urkel. There's some rivalry simmering underneath their interactions that comes to the forefront of Lee's mind once Shin goes missing. Could Ben be the one behind her abrupt disappearance? This is where the thriller part of Burning becomes apparent as Lee tracks Ben constantly in his hunt for answers.

Like the atmospheres in the most avant-garde David Lynch movies like Mulholland Drive, the unique slower-paced style of Burning takes a few minutes to adjust to, but once you do, it's impossible to turn away from it. This unique style allows for earlier mundane scenes allows the viewer to see what Lee's life is like as well as get a clear picture of what kind of dynamic he has with both Shin and Ben. It's here that a level of ambiguity gets introduced regarding what's really going on with Ben that's fascinating in its execution. Steven Yeun's brilliant performance finds ingenious ways to make Ben's behavior work on multiple levels, you can see how his actions could be interpreted as suspicious from the point-of-view of Ben while also working as normal pieces of behavior through another person's eyes.

Yeun makes Ben someone who's frequently just a touch unsettling but also somebody who could easily pass as a normal person, which maybe Ben actually is. Burning doesn't concern itself with offering up a concrete answer as to whether or not Ben is the one behind Shin's disappearance because that's not the point of the film. The central focus here is on the character of Lee and the journey he takes throughout the story. By the end, a person who started this tale as a seemingly normal human being has become just as violent and disruptive as his father and may have driven away a woman he cared about, another trait he would share with his Dad (who definitively did do that with Lee's mother). 

Lee Chang-dong's writing and directing (this screenplay was also penned by Oh Jung-mi) make the second half of Burning a compelling mystery thriller while it's unfolding in front of you but upon reflection, said second half also works as a tragic portrait of a man's descent into the gruesomeness of his own conspiracy theory. Like Steven Yeun's performance, Burning as a movie can work on different levels with equal measures of effectiveness, with its suspenseful sequences being especially potent. The camerawork and editing used in a scene of Lee in a car trailing Ben to a lake are utterly masterful at keeping one on edge on just what could happen next.

Burning is a sensational visual experience both in this specific scene and the rest of the movie and I especially love how this features visual style includes shots, like one particularly great shot of Ben eating a meal with friends at a museum that eventually reveals Lee is lingering the background, that are composed in a way to encourage the viewer to look closer and take in all the details of a single image. There are numerous layers to the story, to the characters and the imagery in Burning and one of the best demonstrations of how this film manages to pack so much depth into seemingly simple circumstances is a single that occurs about midway through the story. Said scene shows Shin, in an extended single take, dancing topless against a sunset in a physical depiction of her inner desire for self-fulfillment all while a beautiful piece of the movie's score (composed by Mowg) plays in the background. So much about the character and her personality is captured here and just on its own this sequence makes Burning something worth watching, though Lord knows it's not the only impressive sequence to be found here.