Expanded from Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning," the sixth feature from Korean master Lee Chang-dong, known best in the U.S. for such searing, emotional dramas as Secret Sunshine (NYFF45) and Poetry (NYFF48), begins by tracing a romantic triangle of sorts: Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in), an aspiring writer, becomes involved with a woman he knew from childhood, Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who is about to embark on a trip to Africa. She returns some weeks later with a fellow Korean, the Gatsby-esque Ben (Steven Yeun), who has a mysterious source of income and a very unusual hobby. A tense, haunting multiple-character study, the film accumulates a series of unanswered questions and unspoken motivations to conjure a totalizing mood of uncertainty and quietly bends the contours of the thriller genre to brilliant effect. Directed by Lee Chang-dong
Release Date - October 26, 2018
I wonder what Xixax will think of this movie. It's so pointlessly long, not about much than its own pointless boredom.
Steven Yeun is amazing.
my favorite film of the year, and one of the very best of the decade.
Well! It seems like I'll be alone on this one! It was kind of a bummer since I liked Poetry, but Burning's apathy was too much for me.
glad it's out. I don't guess I'll see it theatrically, that's too bad. he's South Korea's Kenneth Lonergan? a remarkable vision of human behavior is what I mean. eventually i'll find my way to see it and there's not really the possibility that I won't take something away from it
Quote from: Drenk on November 04, 2018, 12:32:45 PM
Well! It seems like I'll be alone on this one!
not necessarily, but also, who cares? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Quote from: Drenk on November 04, 2018, 12:32:45 PM
It was kind of a bummer since I liked Poetry, but Burning's apathy was too much for me.
one man's apathy is another's patiently mesmerizing, dreamlike rendering of the nightmare of modernity. i thought pacing and tone were masterfully handled and implemented.
Quote from: jenkins on November 04, 2018, 12:43:09 PM
glad it's out. I don't guess I'll see it theatrically, that's too bad. he's South Korea's Kenneth Lonergan? a remarkable vision of human behavior is what I mean. eventually i'll find my way to see it and there's not really the possibility that I won't take something away from it
aren't you in LA? it's playing in LA.
remarkable vision of human behavior, sure, but not necessarily in the same vein as lonergan. lee's ability to conceive and execute deliberate narrative that still lends itself to the openness of life is reminiscent of kieslowski, while the visceral, challenging emotional forcefulness of his work reminds me of lars von trier a la
breaking the waves. needless to say i think he's a remarkable talent.
oasis is a perennial superfavorite and i lurve
secret sunshine (both due for a revisit), and this i think is lee's greatest work. i consider it to be the cinematic equivalent of t.s. eliot's
the love song of j. alfred prufrock, whatever that means... at the very least, an apotheosis.
it's a personal problem because you see i've only gone to four movies this year, and three of them were down the street at WorldForgot's multiplex. if i were actively seeing movies this year i would go see this.
i was meaning to leave you not stranded in terms of supporting Lee Chang-dong, who is smart and talented. like, it's not easy to craft his narratives. that was why i compared him to Kenneth Lonergan, in the vein of what you also said within your post, "pacing and tone were masterfully handled and implemented," and only because Lonergan was the nearest contemporary i could think of at the time. i believe it further supports the cause to expand the perspective into other great filmmakers and i don't disagree.
I saw this last weekend at the Arclight with the Q&A, and it's been "Burning" in my mind ever since (NPI).
I went into this completely blind aside from the poster, not even knowing the runtime, so what I had assumed might be a taut 90-minute character study actually turned out to be a 2 and half hour mini-epic. My initial reaction was that I wasn't sure if the movie earned the runtime and seemed to needlessly drag at parts, especially in the second act.
But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. The sudden shifts from working-class sadsack character study to Jules et Jim love triangle to Hitchcockian psychological suspense/mystery were unexpected and refreshing. Not to mention as well that's there's also a heavy cloud of sociocultural class commentary that hangs over everything at the same time, but this is done in a really subtle, beautiful way. Some of this might have gone over my head as well since I'm not completely acquainted with modern Korean culture. It was more ambitious than I was expecting, and I admire Lee's ability and ambition to mix these distinct tones in one film.
While watching it also occurred to me that in this current international arthouse movie moment, where European arthouse seems to long ago have disappeared up its own cliches, Asia is probably where the most exciting form of auteurist cinema is available nowadays. Some would argue that's been the case for 10-15 years now. This also struck me as the type of international film Hollywood might be eager to remake with Jake Gyllenhaal or something.
SPOILERS
My reaction to the ending is that the ambiguity doesn't really feel necessary and overshadows what comes before. Yeun explained that the ambiguity was intentional, that Lee even went as far as to give him the choice of what he saw the character as. For me, the story has more power if we see Jong-su's perspective as a Bickle-esque study of a unhinged, unreliable narrator.
want to see it bad, problem is it's only playing in one theater 50 miles away, meaning a 100 mile round trip. it played much closer during Thanksgiving week, when i was too jammed up to attend, then was gonezo. considering the dozen or so movies that have peaked my interest currently playing close to home, it's hard to justify making the trip. see the blu comes out in march.
Quote from: Drenk on October 11, 2018, 12:34:47 PM
It's so pointlessly long, not about much than its own pointless boredom.
Had to check it out due to it's stellar reviews and inclusion on a few Top-10 lists.
I liked it less than Drenk did. And I'm hearing rumblings about "Roma" that make it sound like a very similar slog....
as a Roma fan, please don't see it
its dance scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27k1xt8iU0
Best Manic Pixie Dream Ghost ever created for the screen, I guess.
Quote from: Drenk on December 18, 2018, 04:03:41 AM
Best Manic Pixie Dream Ghost ever created for the screen, I guess.
Well we're allowed as much perspective on her as any of the other characters.
This film is a beautiful ode to Murakami's prose -- how hypnotic descriptions of atmosphere/environment turn into passages detailing internal moodz. Our environments become memory trips. Its runtime is appropriate to its fog, in how pensive the film is toward Korea, an ouroboros of capitalist-gestalt, and the emotional ricochet of desire within this mist. NK'z broadcast to SK reaches Jong-Su'z rural habitat in echo.
Something present in Murakami's text that has been rendered here is our fantasies overlapping into bodily rituals, whether we've misplaced our desire or are fully aware that we've directed want of the liminal space. Searching for that very close greenhouse. Jong-Su has more suspicions about himself than Ben, and peeks into the lives of adults only in fragment. Hae-mi is lucid, in tune with the past and the present. What do we remind each other of?
Quote from: WorldForgot on February 26, 2019, 01:28:28 PM
Quote from: Drenk on December 18, 2018, 04:03:41 AM
Best Manic Pixie Dream Ghost ever created for the screen, I guess.
Well we're allowed as much perspective on her as any of the other characters.
This film is a beautiful ode to Murakami's prose -- how hypnotic descriptions of atmosphere/environment turn into passages detailing internal moodz. Our environments become memory trips. Its runtime is appropriate to its fog, in how pensive the film is toward Korea, an ouroboros of capitalist-gestalt, and the emotional ricochet of desire within this mist. NK'z broadcast to SK reaches Jong-Su'z rural habitat in echo.
Something present in Murakami's text that has been rendered here is our fantasies overlapping into bodily rituals, whether we've misplaced our desire or are fully aware that we've directed want of the liminal space. Searching for that very close greenhouse. Jong-Su has more suspicions about himself than Ben, and peeks into the lives adults only in fragment. Hae-mi is lucid, in tune with the past and the present. What do we remind each other of?
<3
Personally, I love this film. Can't wait to see it 10 more times.
stunned this one lived up to its hype. blind bought the blu, watched it today, am fully prepared to watch it again tomorrow. just hypnotizing and creepy in an indescribable way. reminded me of that 80's movie The Vanishing, only more ethereal and epic. thought i'd be waiting impatiently for yuen to appear on screen, only to be sucker punched by the lead dude's charisma. an invigorating film that really did it for me, still letting the entirety seep into my conscience.
this is on netflix now. for the love of god, watch it.