Burning (15)

Monday 09 March 2020

Horsham Film Society – The Best of World Cinema:

Burning (Original title: Beoning)
South Korea 2018, 126 mins, Drama, Mystery
Colour, digital, Cert 15
Director: Chang-dong Lee
Leading actors: Ah-in-Yoo, Steven Yeun, Jong-seo Jun

A bone-dry comedy of class warfare. A perplexing missing-person mystery worthy of Hitchcock or Antonioni. An existential meditation on the little hungers and great hungers that drive us. Returning after an eight-year hiatus from filmmaking, South Korean master of the slow burn Lee Chang-dong (Poetry) did more than perfectly capture the subjective ambivalence of Haruki Murakami’s original short story “Barn Burning.” In stretching it out to fill two-and-half perfectly paced hours, he also teased from his source material a wealth of new meanings and ambiguities, percolating through the love triangle of sorts that envelops an introverted writer (Ah-in Yoo), his hometown classmate-turned-crush (Jong-seo Jun), and her slick, wealthy new beau (Steven Yeun, rivetingly loathsome in a tricky role).

(Film AV Club/ A.A.Dowd)

“Absolutely breathtaking. Brilliantly mystifying in a way that is completely mesmerising.” (Mark Kermode, The Guardian).

Burning was South Korea’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 92st Academy Awards. Although it was not nominated, it became the first Korean film to make it to the final nine-film shortlist. It won the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Click here to watch the trailer.

8.00pm at the Capitol, North Street, Horsham RH12 1RG.

Guest membership available (guest tickets £5 on the door). Click here for details.....

.....and click here to see what else is on this month.