Lee Chang-dong Remembers ‘Burning’ and ‘Poetry’: ‘Each Film Led Me to the Heart of Darkness’
Lee Chang-dong set Cannes ablaze in 2018 with the uneasily beautiful “Burning,” a loose Haruki Murakami adaptation about the folie à troix between an alienated delivery man (Ah-in Yoo), the wily young woman (Jong-seo Jun) he covets, and the handsome charisma machine (Steven Yeun, then in early days of stardom) who blows them apart. The South Korean director’s sixth film made history as Korea’s first to make the International Feature Oscar shortlist (it wasn’t nominated) but is perhaps best remembered for two scenes: the woman, Haemi (Jun), dancing topless for them to the tune of Miles Davis’ “Elevator to the Gallows” soundtrack, and for its abruptly violent ending involving murder and arson in the nude. Then, there’s a missing cat that may have never existed — pure Murakami.
“Burning” remains a new classic of the 2010s, an elusive portrait of loneliness and desire that never spills on its narrative secrets. It grossed an impressive $718,000 at the U.S. box office in fall 2018, turning the filmmaker into something of a discovery for American cinephiles. But Lee, a trained novelist first, had long been making features dating back to 1997 with his breakout portrait of disaffected military youth, “Green Fish,” suicide postmortem “Peppermint Candy,” Oscar entries “Oasis” and “Secret Sunshine,” and dementia drama “Poetry,” whose star Yoon Jeong-hee herself died from complications of Alzheimer’s in 2023. As Lee explained in an email interview with IndieWire on the occasion of an ongoing Metrograph retrospective of his work, Yoon began to develop symptoms of dementia while “Poetry” was in production.
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Take a broad look at the Lee films showing at Metrograph — including 4K restorations of “Peppermint Candy” and “Poetry” — and you’ll see a career marked by a fascination with pain and longing. The “heart of darkness,” as Lee describes it. Lee, who had no formal education in filmmaking before starting out as an assistant director in the early 1990s, often centers his stories on the mentally ill or societal outcasts, placing us squarely in their perspective. An early sex scene in “Burning” is shot literally from Jong-su’s (Yoo) point of view as he becomes distracted by a tower outside the window, and the belongings in Haemi’s (Jun) apartment, which she asks him to housesit while she goes on a mysterious trip. It’s in here that the reserved Jon-su will begin his implosion. Lee’s last outing, the 2022 short film “Heartbeat,” follows an anxious young boy dealing with his mother’s depression.
Lee has not released a feature since “Burning” and has since focused on fiction writing; his short story “Snow Day” was published in The New Yorker in 2023. His literary bona fides show throughout his career: Lee won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2010 for “Poetry.”
In our interview below, condensed and edited for clarity through a translator, he mentions a couple projects he’s working on, though he’s not certain where either will land just yet.
The Lee Chang-dong series “Novel Encounters” runs at Metrograph through April 26.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: Released in 2018, “Burning” is one of your most internationally acclaimed films. You were even a contender for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. How did that elevated reputation change your relationship with filmmaking?
Lee Chang-dong: I don’t really feel anything has changed from then. I do get more pitches from foreign producers than before. But I wasn’t able to find any projects or stories that I wished to do, so I could not accept them.
How does “despair” drive the narrative in your works, and why do you think it is a crucial aspect of your filmmaking?
Everyone unexpectedly faces pain and suffers from hopelessness and failure. That is life. The world unjustly suppresses and gives pain to an individual. The problem is how you cope with the pain. Thus, the struggle is more important than the pain itself. Through the struggle, humans find the purpose of life and find salvation. Protagonists in tragedies are those types of people. I tried to capture the human struggle for meaning through my films.
You have worked as a novelist prior to becoming a filmmaker. How has that influenced how you approach film? For example, “Burning” utilizes Haruki Murakami’s story “Barn Burning” as merely a starting point for more ideas. It’s a loose adaptation.
I have always questioned human nature and life through writing novels. That didn’t change when I entered filmmaking. I wish to ask questions through my films, so that the audience can each find their own answers. That is my default attitude when it comes to filmmaking. I also interpreted Haruki Murakami’s novel as a question about life and the world we are living in. In order to do so, it was necessary to portray and explore today’s world and reality. “Burning” is not only connected to the world of Haruki Murakami, but also the world of William Faulkner. Murakami writes with endless imagination that defies gravity, but Faulkner represents the souls of everyday people suffering from our reality. I wished to combine the two contrasting worldviews with “Burning.”
The final scene of “Burning” is, well, burned in my brain. Did you have that endpoint in mind when you started writing the film?
The two scenes that came to me when I initially started talking about writing “Burning” with screenwriter Oh Jung-Mi are the dancing scene of Haemi and the final scene. When those scenes came to me, I realized that I could finally make the film. Those images worked as a catalyst that led me to create this film. But what actually gets captured through the lens of the camera were not just the images that I had in mind nor just what the screenplay dictated. I always wish to capture the “accidental” or “coincidental” through the camera, rather than something prepared and set during production. Those coincidences feel “real” and “cinematic” to the audience.
The final scene consists of an unexpected murder, the extreme shock and outburst of emotions that follows, and destructive arson. It had to be vividly conveyed to the audience as if they were watching it happen in real life, so the scene had to be shot without any cuts. It had to be meticulously crafted and calculated, but it should not feel artificial. But again, the “reality” I seek came in the form of a coincidence. When the camera began rolling, it began to snow. The snow was the coincidence and the reality that only films could show.
Yoon Jeong-hee was widely praised for her phenomenal performance in the film “Poetry.” What do you remember about working with her? Did you keep in touch until she passed away in 2023?
Yoon Jeong-hee was starting to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s when we were shooting this film. Just like the protagonist of the film, she was suffering from dementia. That was her fate, and “Poetry” was also her fate. She was actually living the life of “Mija” [her character] in the film. Despite her illness, she was able to perform perfect long takes until the end of production. After the film, we often met in Seoul or in Paris where she lived. I also had to watch her condition gradually get worse due to the illness.
Are you working on any projects now?
I am currently writing two different projects. I do not know which one I will get to do first as of now.
What is your proudest or fondest film out of the selection of this year’s Metrograph retrospective on your career? What film has pulled you to the darkest and hardest places?
I cannot choose one film that I am most proud of or that I feel is closest to my heart. Not because I like them all equally, but because they feel like undetachable parts of my body. Every film was difficult for its own reason, and led me to the “Heart of Darkness” that I didn’t know existed during its production.
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