Starring: Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, Jeon Jong-seo
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 148 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2019
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This subtitled, South Korean film is a psychological, mystery drama based on the short story, “Barn Burning” by Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, which was first published in “The New Yorker” magazine in 1992. The film was South Korea’s entry at the 91st Academy Awards, and was rated third best movie by “Sight and Sound” in their list of the 40 best films of 2018.
While working part-time in Paju, South Korea, a young writer, Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), runs into a childhood classmate and “maybe” friend, Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), who remembers things that may, or may not, have happened to them in the past. They are attracted to one another. They sleep together, and she asks him to feed, “Boil”, her cat – which he is never able to find – while she goes on a holiday to Africa, and then leaves to go away. While away, Hae-mi is caught up in a terrorist attack in Nairobi, and asks Jong-su to come and pick her up when she gets back. When Jong-su goes to meet her at the airport at Seoul, Hae-mi arrives in the company of Ben (Steven Yuen) – a person she met in Kenya. Ben is good-looking, rich, smugly confident, and charismatic, upper-class, and seductive. Jong-sun is stunned, lower-class, dismayed, and jealous.
The dynamics linking the trio quickly grow in their complexity. In one of their partying sessions together, Ben confesses that every two months he burns an abandoned greenhouse, and notes that Jong-su’s rural neighbourhood is full of greenhouses, and implies that his next target will be somewhere very near to Jong-su’s home. Jong-su sees Ben as an arsonist with no social guilt, and Jong-su thinks Hae-mi is in danger from a man like him, whose identity no one seems to know. Steven Yeun chillingly projects Ben’s superficial, alluring charm.
Hae-mi goes off with Ben, and Jong-su tries unsuccessfully to make contact with her by phone. Jong-su goes to Ben’s apartment thinking that Hae-mi might be there, but Hae-mi, has vanished without trace. Jong-su finds a cat that Ben has recently acquired which seems to respond to the name, “Boil”, and a watch in Ben’s bathroom is like the one he gave to Hae-mi. He tracks Ben into the countryside where he delivers his version of justice, before driving off in complete despair.
Making any film of Murakami’s work is extremely challenging. Murakami is capable of holding a reader spellbound as he weaves together the real with the surreal, creating incredible tension and mystery in his integration. This film does Murakami’s artistry proud. Jong-su is obsessed with trying to solve the mystery of the woman he loves, and tragedy strikes in his attempt to find her.
No Director can film Murakami without stressing the enigmatic nature of human character. This film is an ambiguous, suspense drama that addresses class privilege, envy, sexual jealousy, justice, and revenge. Its exact meaning is almost impossible to define. Hae-mi vanishes, and Jong-su thinks Ben is responsible, but the viewer never knows what actually happens to Hae-mi. Thematic questions circle around the movie with fierce intensity: What does class privilege mean in Korea, and what is the nature of femininity in that country? How does desire fan rage? What are the conflicts of working-class frustrations, and what confusions characterise genuine love?
The movie is superbly shot. It has a sensuous musical score, and the film captures the darkness of obsessive love that occurs in a society that seems out of control. This is a thriller about revenge that leaves one wondering after the film has finished what really has taken place. The direction by Lee Chang-dong is masterful, and the film relentlessly builds up feelings of foreboding and dread. The first half, which establishes relationships among the key characters, descends in the second half into a psychological thriller, that creates a overall impact that is unnerving.
This is a totally unconventional film that offers a dark vision of the world. It is masterful film-making that is suspenseful, engrossing, and creative. It powerfully asserts that things are never what they seem. It is cinema, in which the complexities and moral paradoxes of the human condition hauntingly tell us what Murakami wants to say.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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