The 50 best films of 2019 in the UK: No 8 - Burning
(The Guardian South Korea)

Lee Chang-dong´s missing-person drama was a flickering gem that forwent easy thrills for a deeply unsettling unresolvednessThe 50 best films of 2019 in the UKMore best culture of 2019South Korea has claimed its place at international cinema´s top table over the last couple of decades, what with the baroque savagery of Park Chan-wook´s Vengeance trilogy and the razor-sharp precision of Bong Joon-ho´s social parables - culminating in his Palme d´Or win for Parasite. (That, due to the vagaries of the release schedule, won´t be part of the Guardian´s UK top 50 lineup for 2019, though it does qualify for the US list.) With all the big beasts out there, it would have been a shame if this remarkable film from Lee Chang-dong had been crowded out.Burning is adapted from a short story Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami. (The title has been shortened, the location moved from Japan to Korea and the central character is not married.) Jong-su is directionless twentysomething, an aspiring writer with a fondness for William Faulkner and saddled with an aggressive father - whose arrest and trial for assault means Jong-su has to spend long hours at the family farm looking after the livestock. A chance meeting with Hae-mi, a girl from his schooldays who he doesn´t remember, sets in train the film´s ineluctably strange events. Continue reading...