Delayed Reaction: Burning

Premise: A possible budding relationship between and young man and woman gets complicated when a mysterious rich other man shows up with unclear intent.

I'm not quite one of those people who discovered Korean cinema because Parasite won Best Picture, but I'm close. I've had a lot of Korean movies in my assorted movie queues for a while. The Handmainden is one of my favorite movies of the last decade. I liked Oldboy too. I saw Parasite of course. That's about the extent of my Korean film experience though. The Parasite win has mostly just shamed me into checking some more Korean movies off my list.

Burning was an obvious pick as the next most recent Korean movie met with great critical acclaim stateside. The pretense of Steven Yeun offered an easy in as well, even though he also sticks to speaking only Korean like everyone else.

I think I watched Burning chasing the wrong high. The Handmaiden and Parasite both ramp up with twists that go in completely different directions and employ dramatic irony for some humor. Burning is not that kind of movie. It's slow and tense. It starts like a RomCom: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl hook up. Girl goes on trip. When boy picks her up at the airport, girl shows up with a guy she met. Boy gets friend-zoned hard. Even during that part of the movie though, something isn't right. The early scenes between Ah-in Yoo and Jong-seo Jun don't exactly feel romantic. When Steven Yeun shows up as this mysterious new guy, he immediately reads as a villain. It's pretty clear what happens to Jong-seo Jun by the end, but the movie never gives us the satisfaction of actually saying it So, when we get to that final scene, there's nothing cathartic about it.

Some of the things that make this movie refreshing and smart are also why I lack excitement about it. It subverts a lot of genre expectations, which only made me appreciate why some of those conventions are normally there. I didn't come away from the movie excited for the next time I'd see it. Not much about it has stuck in my mind in the couple days since I saw it. I think it's a terrifically made, written, and acted movie, but it hasn't been very sticky. Part of this is taste, I'm sure. I also think my lack of familiarity with the subtleties of Korean culture hurt my appreciation some. A lot of the class commentary in the movie I appreciated on a basic level. A lot was going over my head though. I even found myself pausing on occasion to look some things up on Wikipedia. However, I'm no less excited to dig into more Korean cinema.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend