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Korea · 2018
2h 28m
Director Lee Chang-dong
Starring Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, Jun Jong-seo, Kim Soo-kyung
Genre Drama, Mystery, Thriller
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Jongsu, a quiet delivery boy and aspiring writer, is unemployed and living alone when he runs into Haemi, an eccentric girl who once lived in his neighborhood. He agrees to watch her cat while she goes to Africa, and when she returns with an enigmatic young man she befriended abroad, Jongsu's simple and solitary life is upended.
Burning simmers. For nearly two-and-a-half perfectly measured hours, it turns up the heat without boiling over: a drama becoming a thriller in slow motion, intensifying little by little minute by minute, until finally it reaches a shocking, powerful crescendo.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Emily Yoshida
There is so much fascinating, underplayed tension running through Burning.... I was a little let down, then, when Burning lost its steam in its second half.
Burning keeps twisting back on itself, charting the path of a man waking up to the world, only to find that it won’t stop messing with him.
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
Burning is a character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
This is a gripping nightmare.
The degree to which Burning succeeds will depend largely on one’s capacity to identify with the unspoken but strongly conveyed sense of jealousy and frustration its lower-class protagonist feels, coupled with a need to impose some sense of order on events beyond our control.
The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor
Burning might not have a huge amount going on below its gorgeous surface, but it drags the viewer along with all the seductive intrigue of a frothy page-turner.
Screen International by Tim Grierson
Once again, Lee has crafted a film of wondrous complexity and inscrutability. The more we see in Burning, the less sure we are of what we are watching.
This is Lee’s closest ever film to a thriller, but it defies expectations, offering multiple, murky solutions to a set of mysteries at once.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
This is a beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice and revenge.
Two performers find and lose love in Cold War Poland — only to find it again years later.
Deaf to the desires of their wives, Alain and Léonard struggle to find their place in a society whose code they can no longer crack.
Burning is an encompassing and enigmatic film that takes a novelistic approach to the narrative. It's nontraditional, but all the more interesting for its refusal to conform to any particular formula. No pun intended, this film is a slow burn well worth the watch.
This film is a captivating adaptation of Murakami's "Barn Burning." Steven Yeun is great and charismatic. Cool to see him do a role in Korean. The visuals are very beautiful, especially when they are sitting outside Jongsu's house with the jazz music in the background. The tone is handled really well because the film feels slightly off throughout but it is hard to understand why until the end.
BURNING is incredibly subtle in its seduction. The slow pace builds tension in the viewer, who can sense that something is not quite right but is left without a tangible reason why. Hae-mi is the film’s enigmatic empty center, and her interactions with the two love interests, complete foils of one another, drive the mystery forward.
This movie takes its time to develop its themes and characters, and gradually makes you deeply invested in its story. All the acting is great, especially Steven Yeun. The story works in themes about class without being didactic, and there's enough uncertainty to make the movie constantly interesting. It's a movie that I couldn't stop thinking about for days after I watched it.