In 2018, a South Korean film broke the Cannes Critics’ Poll record, achieving an unprecedented score of 3.8 out of 4. Yet, after narrowly missing the Palme d’Or and upon its theatrical release, the film’s reputation grew polarized due to its enigmatic narrative. Was the heroine murdered? Was the revenge at the end real or imagined? What lay behind the protagonist’s anger? This film, Burning, directed by Lee Chang-dong, has only deepened in resonance over time, leading to more profound interpretations.
The film begins in a messy marketplace. Jong-su, the protagonist, is a young man from the lower class, earning a living as a day laborer. On the streets of Seoul, he encounters Hae-mi, a childhood neighbor who has undergone plastic surgery and is in debt—a commodified figure introduced to the audience. Hae-mi shares her dream of traveling to Africa. As she speaks, she pantomimes peeling an imaginary tangerine, remarking, “Don’t think there is a tangerine here. Just forget that there isn’t one.” This phrase holds the key to understanding Burning. Lee intentionally plays with this statement, embedding the narrative with blurred boundaries between reality and illusion—such as the cat Hae-mi leaves in Jong-su’s care. Though he never sees it, the food he leaves out always disappears. The film suggests that the line between reality and imagination is tenuous. A deep enough yearning can construct its own truth.
Burning draws its framework and concepts from two literary works: Haruki Murakami’s 2016 short story "Barn Burning" and William Faulkner’s 1939 story of the same name. Murakami’s tale centers on the practice of burning barns and explores the spiritual emptiness of three young people. Faulkner’s work portrays an older man who burns his employer’s barn, revealing how anger takes root, grows, and transforms, becoming an inherited affliction. In Burning, Jong-su’s fragile ego and the gap between his self-worth and circumstances mirror Faulkner’s vision. This dissonance inexorably draws Jong-su down a path of no return.
In contrast to Jong-su is Ben, a wealthy young man whom Hae-mi meets in Africa. During the dinner, Hae-mi tearfully confesses her longing to vanish when staring at the sunset, only to be interrupted by Ben with the unconcerned remark, “It’s fascinating to see people crying.” Hae-mi had mentioned the Bushmen’s concept of two kinds of hunger: “little hunger,” the physical need for sustenance, and “great hunger,” the existential yearning for meaning. Both Jong-su and Hae-mi are trapped in the little hunger, struggling to survive. Ben, however, embodies great hunger. In a later scene, he observes and even enjoys his elite friends mocking Hae-mi’s experiences in Africa, like a hunter showing off his prey. Ben’s indifference as Hae-mi dances—a yawn signaling his satiated ennui—marks him as a predator seeking more extreme forms of fulfillment.
Back in Jong-su’s hometown, Paju, the peaceful scenery is subtly disrupted by the faint sounds of broadcasts from the North Korean border. As Bong Joon-ho used a tilt-up shot to show the vertical space difference in Parasite in order to underscore socio economic divides, Lee uses sound to evoke dissonance. The potential noise of Jong-su’s surroundings contrasts with the polished music filling Ben’s luxury apartment, emphasizing their class disparity. Ben casually mentions his “hobby” of burning abandoned greenhouses, saying, “You can make it disappear, as if it never existed.” Not long after, Hae-mi vanishes. Both Jong-su and the audience sense Ben’s implication, but Jong-su remains obsessed, wandering through fields and deserted greenhouses, haunted by childhood dreams and the image of burning barns.
In an obituary for Edward Yang in Film Comment, Olivier Assayas highlighted the parallels between Korean and Taiwanese society. Yang’s The Terrorizers influenced Burning in its exploration of anger. In the final ten minutes of Yang’s film, the protagonist Li, consumed by rage, steals a gun and kills his boss, his wife’s former lover, and finally, the gun points to his wife. Yet in a sudden twist, as the shot rings out, the murder is revealed as nothing but a dream—Li’s actual victim is himself, undone by the suffocating weight of his life. Anger, as a destructive and revelatory force, is central to both Yang and Lee’s work. While Yang’s films channeled his fury at Taiwan’s sociopolitical turbulence, Lee’s perspective is more reflective. Jong-su’s confusion, “To me, the world is a mystery,” captures the alienation and futility that defines his—and perhaps his generation’s—rage.
At the end of Burning, Jong-su stabs Ben, strips naked, and sets Ben’s car ablaze, screaming into the snowy landscape like a newborn or a monster. Whether this act occurs in reality or is a figment of Jong-su’s novel, it epitomizes the tragedy of an ordinary man consumed by anger, driven to self-destruction. After an eight-year hiatus, Lee crafted Burning not merely to critique South Korea’s societal ills but to probe a more universal malaise. “When we sense something is wrong, we try to fix it,” he said in an interview. “That kind of anger is hopeful. But this anger, where you don’t even know what’s wrong or what to do—it consumes everything.” This sweeping helplessness of losing control of oneself, drives modern youth to extremes, leaving most of them adrift without resolution. In addressing this, Lee Chang-dong is tender, nuanced, and steadfast. The unresolved questions in Burning converge into an inquiry: Is this anger merely a symptom of youth, or does it reflect a more profound societal affliction? The film’s power lies not in its answers but in the silence that follows, inviting us to confront our own lives and the world we live in.
Yanqing Jin is a sophomore Film student at the School of Visual Arts who is also a tree that moves at 0.8x the speed of an ordinary person. She finds it easier to be friends with mushrooms and computers than humans.