Burning (Beoning)

Wednesday 17 July at 7.30pm

Lee Chang-dong | South Korea | 2018 | 142 mins | M violence, sex scenes, nudity & drug use

A tense, haunting romantic drama transforms into an enigmatic and mysterious thriller in this adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami.

“Not a lot actually burns in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning… But the cumulative effect of all its perfect moments, all its perfectly true, unexpected and consequential scenes, is scorching. The embers are banked up so gradually and relentlessly that it’s not until a few hours after the ending of this elusive, riveting masterpiece that you are far enough away to appreciate the scale of the conflagration…
It is based on a skeletal short story by Murakami Haruki in the same way a spreading oak is based on an acorn… The absolute precision of craft, from Hong Kyung-pyo’s unerring camera placement to [the] stunningly variegated and cleverly deployed score, illuminates a trio of performances that are little short of miraculous… The narrative is slippery as silk, eliding from romance to tragedy to mystery to something more unsettling… This sense of surprise and inevitability is a hallmark of truly masterful writing… and such skilful direction that it feels like you’re suspended within the story in an invisible tangle of glances and exchanges, secrets and lies, tricks and cruelties and lucky shafts of reflected sunlight.” — Jessica Kiang, Sight & Sound