"I feel a bass, right here. A bass that rings to the very bones."

dir. Lee Chang-Dong.
Synopsis: Jong-Su meets a woman who may or may not have known him from long ago, and whose friend Ben may not quite be what he claims to be. Cannes Trailer.
148m. 2.39:1.

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What is the significance of living?

Anyone who saw this Cannes entry and also saw the film it lost the Palme d’Or to– Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters– should by now agree that a mistake was made in the handing out of cinema’s most respected trophy. While the excellent Shoplifters is no Green Book, there’s no denying that one of these films uses the language of camera movement, mise-en-scene, color, light, soundscape, editing and pace– in short, the language of cinema– to communicate to us viewers, while the other uses… basically none of these, sticking with acting and writing and not much more.

Acting and writing derive more obviously from other art forms, whereas the tenets of cinematic form take better advantage of the medium’s potency. With all due respect to Kore-eda, a director whose purity of perspective and lack of irony I genuinely love, the Shoplifters approach is closer to watching (really good) theatre. Burning is a different matter entirely. It creates a mood that cannot be replicated in another format, because it uses tools specific to cinema.

Burning does more than utilize the tools of Pure Cinema though. Director Lee (actually pronounced “Ee” in Korean) draws us in so much by leaving a lot out– we ponder all the further, studying every movement and moment for clues... to what, we are not even sure. The less you know going into this one, the better.

Suffice it to say that it’s worth setting aside 148 minutes for something pretty spellbinding. I haven’t leaned that far forward while watching a picture in years. The explorations of the movie reach beyond the already compelling question of what the relationships are between these three people, and far beyond the already hugely compelling question mark of whether or not one of them is a criminal.

A young man meets a woman he doesn’t recognize, but who remembers him well from childhood; she leaves and reappears with a man of mysterious origin who seems in every way his opposite. One is unable to experience human emotion; another watches everything but remains inscrutable; the third is hungry for a plane of understanding the other two can’t seem to fathom. And yet despite all these unanswered secrets, the climactic act of the film feels violently necessary, even appropriate, on levels we cannot articulate.

Just watch it. And don’t read further unless you’ve seen the picture!

SPOILER TALK:

On Withholding

Haemi’s comments about mime, and her search for something that transcends the entirety of the spectrum upon which either end of Jongsu and Ben sit, gain new meaning in light of her subsequent absence. Even an aside like “cats have a hard time changing their environment” becomes evocative in retrospect. When Haemi dances to the twilight and Miles Davis's score to Elevator to the Gallows, she seems to be ascending to a higher plane that is hers alone to touch.

When Ben begins talking about burning down greenhouses, we are intitally shocked by the utterly unexpected nature of his comments, almost amused, but upon later guessing what he was referring to, chilled by his nonchalant attitude, just like those yawns of his that in retrospect strike one as disturbing.

Ben seems to represent so many different things that are fundamentally wrong, and Jongsu’s violent act at the end seems borne of a deep-seated need to forcibly reject all of them: Ben's lack of human emotion, the social inequality he represents, his ease of lifestyle during a time when others struggle to get by,  the very concept of uselessness, and his apathetic and potentially murderous blankness, his amorality.

I appreciate the film withholding certain details, and notice it plays differently on subsequent viewings: we now know, for example, that the nighttime phone calls are his mother. But certain moments– Jongsu sneaking up on Ben by the water reservoir, with lots of buildup but which we never learn the consequence of; the fact that other women in the film wear a pink wristwatch, casting doubt on Ben’s unproven guilt; the suspicion that we may be seeing Jongsu’s writerly imagination, given that the scene of him at his typewriter sits adjacent to the only scene in the movie he’s not in; Jongsu’s uncharacteristic confidence in telling his mother he’ll “handle it,” whatever the problem they’re talking about is; the unseen cat, and so many more– these, as ever, draw us in even after the film is over.

Ephemeralities

I think the question of whether or not Ben is really up to something sinister is less a question than the strongly felt truth that there is something wrong about him, something criminal in spirit, that Jongsu can sense. Jongsu also seems often to be on another plane,  one that the worldly Ben cannot understand.

I find it fascinating and very nearly endearing that Ben is reading Faulkner, sincerely trying to understand Jongsu, because Ben feels he can understand everyone else but somehow not Jongsu; and that Ben seems to feel genuinely upstaged by Haemi’s comment that Jongsu is her closest companion. Ben has achieved all that mainstream society would call ideal, and yet, when faced with Jongsu, is faced with something completely outside his capacity to understand. Says actor Steven Yeun, who plays Ben:

"[Lee and I] didn’t try to understand Ben from a material, physical level, but from a deep, philosophical one.”

I like wondering about whether or not Jongsu, who often seems “slow” or dense, is in fact quite a bit more perceptive and in tune to something higher or larger than he lets on. The fact that this is never confirmed as such makes me lean in even more. There seem to be scenes which exist for the purpose of having us ponder the question: him looking up at the ceiling during his father’s courtroom arraignment; him walking out during the group job interview. Viewers of Lee’s films will know this is a recurring theme– a character who possesses a socially undesirable trait, which elevates their perspective in ways invisible to those around them.

On Language

There is also the question of the phoneticization of the title. There is a Korean word for “burning,” but this title uses neither it nor the Japanese one from the Murakami short, but rather Korean characters phonetically spelling out the english word: “baw-ning.” One other word in this film also receives this treatment, in arguably the film's most important dialogue exchange: “the Great Hunger.”

Haemi even points out that what she’s describing are not the regular words for appetite, starvation, yearning, or craving, but something a concept beyond the definitions these words contain. Same with the title.

Speaking further of language, Korean speakers will note how jarringly quickly Haemi switches to the informal tense with Jongsu, as well as the absurdity of Ben continuing to use the polite formal with someone of infinitely inferior social status during all of their interactions. He comes off as even more condescending than if he were using the informal or “rude” suffixes with this new stranger.

Many films remain elusive for much of their runtime only to let all the wind out of their sales by explaining their secrets at the end (oh, Midnight Special). This one holds its cards close for its entire length, begging us to continue mulling things over long afterwards.

This pervading sense of unknowing, coupled with the Korean language, which I as an amateur speaker I enjoy parsing and trying to keep up with, caused me to experience a sense of hyper-observation and attentiveness to detail at a degree beyond how I watch most films. Multiple viewings, incredibly, only sustain the pervasive mood of ambiguity. Lee’s knowing just what to show and not show, in all his pictures, I think, must strike a Korean viewer as particularly unique, given the new Korean cinema’s tendency to be too extreme, too transgressive (and for me often unwatchable), simply for the sake of being so.

Isn’t less always more?

I'll leave it to those around me to conclude whether or not I'm the same person I was eight years ago, when I started my blog. I lack the requisite self-awareness to make such pronouncements.

What I can say is that some of my earlier posts carry a specificity of romantic perspective which was more limited than it is now, and which I've expanded as the years have worn on. I was learning, you see, and still am.

My deep-seated enthusiasm for human existence is in the early posts more exclusively aimed at the downtrodden, those souls with whom I identify most closely. It's easiest for us to sympathize with our own experience, and as a working-class mixed-race adult who will always be, on the inside, a quiet, shy child from a working-class immigrant family, I feel an affinity for those who similarly live in the humble margins, taking life as it comes and making the best of things.

The compass point of my enthusiasm remains weighted for this reason and one more– the people I encounter in the working-class and low income neighborhoods I serve have, in general, been nicer to me. It's fair to state I've observed a greater appreciation of kindness and respect in those populations, and how am I not going to welcome that with open arms?

What I take issue with in my younger self is how I allowed this enthusiasm, these observations and inclinations, to limit my appreciation of people outside the groups under discussion. Youngsters– and humans at large– tend to categorize what they do not understand, and I've fallen for that trap as well. In my early posts you may notice a whiff of condescension toward people who don't engage, commuters and other affluent passenger groups. This reductive and binary sort of thinking, wherein we turn away from one set because of how much we like another, or disregard entire populations based on the high-profile actions of a few, is best described as exactly the type of prejudice I seek to dismantle in my writing, and the reverse prejudice that surfaced in my thinking back then is at best problematic, and at worst hypocritical.

Yes, I feel more loved on routes like the 7. People engage more, smile more, make more eye contact, reach out to each other, remember me. Yes, these observations have led me to develop preferences, bolstered by the congruences of my own background.

But that's not the whole picture. No one culture group has a claim on humanity's best traits. Two things have changed in my life in the interim.

I didn't used to know a lot of wealthy people. I do now. Yes, money has a way of poisoning people. Yes, luxury vehicles tend to drive with less respect for those around them. Yes, apathy and the upper echelon are often bedfellows.

But not all the time. Especially not now, when income disparity is such that most of our city's upper class is just another part of the 99 percent, not the one percent (Level 7 Amazon only makes $153k annually, not the one percent's $7.3 million).

The second element is more important, and it's what happens when you become humbled by tragedy. It's possible to make it through your teen years and perhaps even a chunk of your twenties without slamming into the wall of failures bigger than yourself. Of Things Going Wrong and Just Not Working Out.

Eventually, despite your best efforts, you'll come across an obstacle you can't surmount, that you'll instead have to adjust to living with. Do we come of age in the aftermath, when we realize that everyone around us is damaged goods too, and that they deserve endless and unrelenting forgiveness, because they're trying, as we are, to find love in whatever manner they most cherish– acknowledgement, respect, validation, salvation?

It's okay to be quiet. Introverted. Some of my favorite people thrive by withdrawing, and I know now to better admire them for it.
It's okay to be angry, frustrated by my friendly airs and wishing for silence.

The story of a person who didn't like my colloquial approach at first and angrily accosted me for it, but who would later come around, doesn't need to be told here. It lives best spoken by those two who were there, if at all. It lives best in the rising sensation I had driving away.

Alisha. Thank you.

Not just for the second conversation, but for both of them. You confronted me directly, rather than going through the back channels to my boss's desk, and I respect that. But more importantly, you came up a second time, and shared what you shared: a change of heart, gifted with kinder airs. That takes courage and remarkable grace. I am deeply humbled. I was on the side of town I live in but feel a stranger in, and this affluent commuter had expansive humility enough to apologize for her earlier indignation and admit she felt differently now. It remains one of my favorite moments on the 5: near the tail end of the route with no one else aboard, introducing ourselves as friends at the end of the discussion, erasing a bad night and rewriting it anew.

If her initial resistance to kindness plays into an assumption we might carry– that convivial interaction (especially between classes) is more readily rejected in wealthier areas, I've got a counterexample: a furious homeless man leaving my 10, the last in a line of deboarding passengers whom I was thanking and faring well. When he got to me he snarled threateningly, "Don't say anything to me." I nod-lowered my head, gently raising my hands in the air. He stormed off, upholding the unspoken truce, refraining from whatever his line threatened. He was going through something, and like Alisha on the other end of town, he needed space and silence, not small talk, to work through whatever it was.

There are good people everywhere. Sometimes they just need a little room.