"A highly successful Murakami adaptation"
Lee Chang-dong's film Burning is adapted from the short story Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami which features in his collection The Elephant Vanishes (2003). Murakami stories are notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen, it takes real skill to draft a screenplay out of the source material, but in this case Lee Chang-dong delivers.
The film adapts not only the source material (the pantomime student, the Miles Davies soundtrack and the admission of arson) but layers additional tropes from the Murakami canon to great effect. The Jay Gatsby references are reminiscent of Killing Commendatore (2018) and the errant cat could be straight out of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997). The girl who goes to ground and the motif of the well are also familiar themes in the Murakami canon.
Lee Chang-dong's decision to relocate the action to Seoul and to switch the main character to a farm boy living near the 38th Parallel makes the film stand on its own as a highly successful adaptation. The tension created between the rustic farm and the affluent Gangnam apartment is brilliantly played out in the final shocking scenes that demonstrate the toxicity of male envy.
Burning is an enigmatic and sensuous menage a trois that builds on the source material to create a film that perfectly captures the paradox at the heart of masculinity in 2019.
The film adapts not only the source material (the pantomime student, the Miles Davies soundtrack and the admission of arson) but layers additional tropes from the Murakami canon to great effect. The Jay Gatsby references are reminiscent of Killing Commendatore (2018) and the errant cat could be straight out of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997). The girl who goes to ground and the motif of the well are also familiar themes in the Murakami canon.
Lee Chang-dong's decision to relocate the action to Seoul and to switch the main character to a farm boy living near the 38th Parallel makes the film stand on its own as a highly successful adaptation. The tension created between the rustic farm and the affluent Gangnam apartment is brilliantly played out in the final shocking scenes that demonstrate the toxicity of male envy.
Burning is an enigmatic and sensuous menage a trois that builds on the source material to create a film that perfectly captures the paradox at the heart of masculinity in 2019.
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