Boeing Burning (2018)

Winner of the IFIP prize at this year's Cannes festival. John is a guy in his twenties working as a delivery driver who runs into Amy, a girl he knew back when they were kids—though he hasn't given her a second thought in years. After she reminds him he used to be pretty brutal about her looks (which John doesn't even remember), this stunning woman starts leading him on, kicking off a sudden, intense relationship. But then Amy asks John for a favor: while she’s traveling through Africa, he needs to watch her cat. John says yes, obviously, even though he starts questioning if she actually cares about him—especially once Amy gets back from her trip with Ben, this mysterious guy who happens to be her new (wealthy) friend.

The latest film from modern classic Lee Chang-dong, based on a short story by Murakami. Even though it's an adaptation, 'Burning' feels more like a spiritual sequel to his previous masterpiece, 'Poetry'. In that one, you had an elderly woman trying to make sense of a brutal crime committed by her teenage grandson. In this movie, that grandson's generation has grown up and now they're front and center.

Both films basically suggest that reality is warped—filtered through the symbolic consciousness of our surrogate detectives, who all happen to be artists (the grandma writes Poetry, John writes novels). Both 'Poetry' and 'Burning' feature leads digging through areas of psychological ambiguity and following trails—which leads to some wild genre shifts, like that killer lake scene in 'Burning'. Plus, themes of class struggle and social hierarchy are everywhere—here, it's tied directly to the pathology of a somewhat unstable, unpredictable protagonist.
So, are Amy and Ben just characters from a novel? Just shadows cast by the lead? Who vanished into the well, and who burned in the greenhouse? Is the cat alive or dead? 😬

(Probably the best film of last year for my taste)

I’d have to agree—this is easily my film of the year.

Thanks for the recommendation!

spoiler alert!

Watching this ultra-sensitive slow-burner is honestly such a trip—it’s simultaneously infuriating and incredibly soothing, kind of like being stuck in one of those intense, messy romances. I actually caught myself identifying with some of the jealousy in there; let's be real, if you haven't felt that sting, you probably haven't experienced true love.

As for that radical ending? I’d say it’s less about the plot and more like the boiling point of the clash between traditionalism and modernity that builds up inside the lead. Though, honestly, who even *is* the main character here? I bet half the audience was rooting for the guy in the Porsche instead.

To me, the finale works as a metaphor for all the social upheaval and twisted values weighing the protagonist down. It's basically a tug-of-war: cheap plastic vs. a high-end Porsche, old-school ways vs. the modern world, poverty vs. wealth, justice vs. total unfairness.

5🙂0

Just like how I missed out on Murakami's charm, this didn't really do it for me either.

I actually dug the North Korean propaganda and the whole pantomime vibe, but once that was gone—and once all that stuff disappears in Murakami 😁—I just completely checked out.

Though, mentioning Poetry caught my eye; I think I might actually give that a watch.

A budget version of Rear Window.

@fadedmason7/">@@fadedmason7
In what sense exactly is Boeing considered "heavyweight"?

goldenhound32 said:@fadedmason7/">@@fadedmason7
What do you mean by Boeing being "heavy"?

Nah, not even close. The interpretation is totally off base—those scenes aren't explicitly labeled as dreams (nothing in the movie is ever definitively marked), and the whole thing has zero to do with socialist realism. That final scene isn't an overstatement either—it just completely flips everything you thought you knew up to that point. Period.

@goldenhound32/">@@goldenhound32: (Spoilers) The way they portray the rich—everyone from actual psychopaths like Ben to those just plain indifferent assholes who don't give a damn about his girlfriends' fates. Okay, maybe calling it "socialist realism" is a bit much, I'll give you that, but the movie definitely leans hard into populist vibes. Amy is broke and uneducated, sure, but she’s got soul and does mime; meanwhile, all of Ben's buddies are just shallow hedonists. Even the mom is a villain for ditching John and his dad just to chase consumerist thrills (that phone scene, ugh). Etc.

@Dennis Martin6/">@@Dennis Martin6: Read your post on the other thread. You're reading way too much into this—you're basically seeing Schrödinger's cat everywhere. 😁 As far as I recall—I saw this in the theater a few days ago, so I haven't double-checked—both of those controversial scenes are clearly framed as the protagonist's dream.

@Henry Campbell5/">@@Henry Campbell5, I caught it recently too. That kangaroo hunt (probably the most brutal thing in the whole movie) and that drunken gay brawl... unforgettable. A masterpiece.

fadedmason7 said:@goldenhound32/">@@goldenhound32: (Spoilers) Based on how the rich are portrayed—they’re either total psychopaths like Ben or just indifferent jerks who couldn't care less about his girlfriends' fates. Calling it social realism might be a stretch, I'll give you that, but the movie is definitely playing to the populist crowd. Amy is poor and uneducated, sure, but she has "soul" and does mime, whereas all of Ben's friends are just shallow hedonists. Even the mom is a villain because she ditched John and his dad for consumerist junk (that phone scene). Etc.

@Dennis Martin6/">@@Dennis Martin6: Read your post on the thread. You're reading way too much into this flick—you're basically hallucinating Schrödinger's cat at this point. 😁 As far as I recall—I saw this in a theater a few days ago, so I'm not even gonna double-check—both of those controversial scenes are clearly marked as the protagonist's dream.

spoilers

That burning greenhouse scene? That's the whole movie's modus operandi right there: the kid is John watching his dad burn his mom's stuff after she bailed, which he talks about with Ben earlier. But the director shows us a burning greenhouse instead of clothes. Ben's story about greenhouses bled into John's memory—a real past event gets distorted through John's neurotic present-day consciousness. That's the director's playbook for the entire film: the idea that Ben is a psychopath is just an assumption based on the guess that he killed Amy and dumped her body in a lake, but none of that actually happens on screen. There is zero material evidence in the film to back that up. The only person we're 100% sure is a killer is John at the end.

The movie isn't about "rich vs. poor"—that's just a populist way to read it. It's actually about that gap between what the director suggests and how the viewer interprets it. Ben is basically Gatsby from that famous Fitzgerald novel, serving as our link to this vendetta-driven world. Amy is the girl who becomes unrecognizable after plastic surgery, using mime to simulate a new reality (this has nothing to do with having a "soul"). John is the writer crafting the story about these characters. The interaction between the three plays out within a space of constant propaganda over the loudspeakers—a sign of the artificially constructed reality and life the protagonist inhabits.

fadedmason7 said:Boeing (2018)
The only redeeming qualities arethe soundtrack and the cinematography. 5/10

Finally, a sensible rating. 🙂

For me, Burning was easily the best film of 2018.

Dennis Martin6 said:the movie isn't really about the gap between the haves and the have-nots...

look, if you need something more concrete to chew on, just focus on the clash between traditional values and modern ways ☕

@Dennis Martin6/">@@Dennis Martin6
I don't have much time to spare right now, so I'll just say that I agree. I didn't grasp every single nuance of what you were saying, but there is certainly logic to it. It belongs among the better films of 2018.

Spoilers ahead!

Dennis Martin6 said:That greenhouse scene? It’s basically the movie's whole MO—that kid John just watching his dad burn his mom's stuff after she bailed, which is exactly what he was venting about to Ben earlier. But get this: the director shows us a burning greenhouse instead of actual clothes. It's like Ben's story about those greenhouses leaked into John's head—real memory gets totally warped by John's neurotic headspace in the present.

The greenhouse scene and that moment with Amy—those are basically the only two non-linear, dreamlike bits in the whole movie. That’s my main gripe—they aren't the "modus operandi," they're just exceptions that probably got hacked down to nothing in the edit.

I figured the kid was John—but I don't think we're looking at some "distorted memory" about him burning his mom's stuff. It feels more like this whole phantasmagoria thing tied to his father. In the original book, specifically with Faulkner, the dad gets accused of... Barn burning—classic Faulkner. Just gritty, raw stuff.So, at Boeing, it turns out the dad got convicted for attacking an officer. Honestly, it feels like this whole "burning plastic" thing is just a toxic mix of his mom's baggage and his dad's criminal record—talk about a bad combo. Didn't Ben claim that plastic burns so easily because the cops just don't do anything about it? And man, John almost burned one down himself.

That’s exactly the director's play here—he spends the whole movie gaslighting the audience into thinking Ben is some total psychopath. It's all based on this unproven theory that he killed Amy and dumped her body in the lake, but honestly? There isn't a single shred of actual evidence on screen to back that up. At the end of the day, the only guy we can be 100% sure is a killer is John.

Fair enough interpretation— one Since we’re seeing everything through the eyes of a manic John—who is, let's face it, a total unreliable narrator—everything is filtered through his warped perspective. But Amy really did vanish without a trace; even the other characters back it up. We might be lacking hard evidence, but the circumstantial clues are strong enough that you can't just toss John-suov's theory aside. And yeah, Ben's guilt? Still totally up in the air. Beyond a reasonable doubt—period.To quote the fund— 😉 I honestly think that ending hits way too hard—like, it's a total overkill. Having a lethargic guy like John, who’s been nothing but a passive observer this whole time, just commit a brutal murder in the final scene? Especially when he hasn't even found any real smoking gun—because let's be real, the cat and the watch aren't exactly "case closed" level proof.

The movie isn't even about the rich vs. the poor—honestly, thinking it is just some populist way of reading it. It all happens in that gap between what the director intends and how we actually see it. Ben is basically Gatsby from that classic Fitzgerald novel—our only real link to this whole Van Dyck-style world. And Amy? She’s like that girl who gets so much plastic surgery she becomes unrecognizable, using nothing but mime to try and simulate a whole new reality (not that it has anything to do with the "soul"). John is the writer behind this whole thing—he's basically crafting the story about these characters we're watching. The way these three interact—it’s all happening inside this bubble of non-stop propaganda blaring from the loudspeakers... it’s just a sign of how artificial the protagonist's whole reality and life actually is.

I can't get behind the underlined part—there's zero class struggle vibes in Murakami's stuff. It’s more like Faulkner, where that theme is everywhere, and the director/writer is clearly leaning on that text to flesh out the characters. You've got massive youth unemployment on one hand, then you have John and Amy's pathetic little jobs, the dad's run-down farm... and then there's Ben and his crew, the mom, all that. John starts off feeling this class resentment toward Ben, and then everything else just follows...

John acting as the narrator of the story? In a metaphorical sense, sure, since he's our focal point. Or are we talking literally? He doesn't even start writing until she disappears—or maybe later, I can't quite recall. His "story" might just be the movie's resolution, not the whole dramatic arc. If we follow your logic, you could argue that Ben's murder at the end is actually a crime committed within a novel by John's literary alter ego—just some cold revenge served up in the realm of the author's imagination.

Anyway, thanks for clearing some things up. It's a super interesting take, even if it feels a bit forced to me. 👍

S p o i l e r s

So, what’s the verdict on that FC theory that Ben and John are actually the same person?

I went down a rabbit hole of interpretations after watching this, and honestly, I'm just more confused than when I started.

To me, things like the bracelets, the makeup, then later the watch and the cat, felt like signs that Amy was staying—and eventually living—with Ben. Using a serial killer's trophy collection as a plot device just felt lazy and beneath the story... It also meant that since I never saw Ben as a killer, his staring at the lake made zero sense.

And what about the well? John keeps obsessing over it, yet we get no payoff. Why the little thing in her room while she stares at the tower? Or is her room even real? Maybe Amy is just a figment of John's imagination, and he’s still just sitting in his studio apartment typing out everything that's happening...

Then there are the knives. John's father was in the military, and those combat knives end up with Ben. The lawyer mentions investing in Manhattan, and Ben has an apartment there. Plus, John clearly has money if he tells his mom he'll fix her problems, which ties back to the idea of the cow symbolizing wealth. It all circles back to my first question. 😁

Maybe the key is her pantomime... that bit about the orange: you don't have to believe something is there, you just have to not believe it isn't. 😵 😵 🤦

fadedmason7 said:Following your logic, you could argue that Ben's murder is basically just a hit carried out by John-suov's literary alter ego—just a cold-blooded revenge served up right inside the author's own imagination.

If the mods would just be decent enough to move this discussion to the right sub—then we could actually get somewhere. The topic.Alright, let's not clog up this thread. 🙂

Spoilers.

Yeah, that’s exactly where my logic is headed. At the end of the day, both Ben and Amy are just different sides of the author's own personality—sides he eventually decides to kill off. We see Ben's murder happen right in front of us, while Amy basically vanishes from the movie after John loses his cool and starts tearing into her with those insults. After that? She's gone. Just completely wiped from the picture.

All three characters share these overlapping, bleeding traits—it's almost weird. You’ve got Ben, who's supposedly this killer and greenhouse arsonist, while John is the only one we actually see pulling the trigger or trying to torch the place (though he ends up burning down a car instead). Then there's John—this passive observer who somehow doubles as a writer and the only guy prone to these total psychotic, rage-filled outbursts—calling Amy names, the greenhouse thing, the murder, the car fire at the end... you get the idea. Then you have Amy, who went under the knife for plastic surgery, while Ben spends his time "beautifying" his victims. Amy does mime, and John is just an obsessive masturbator. It’s just a massive pile of correlated traits that feel like they all crawled out of one single imagination—a mind split into different personas. Even when we first meet Ben, he arrives from Africa—coming straight out of that imaginary "other" world.

I’m not buying the idea that only two scenes are ambiguous. When you’ve got characters this "quantumly" undefined—totally fluid—the whole linear narrative starts to implode. Take that penultimate writing scene, for instance. It could just as easily drop right after the murder at the end. Or maybe stick it in the first third, right after the sex scene. Hell, it could even be the opening shot before he even meets Amy—just some dreamlike composite. Same goes for the scene at his dad's house and those sexual fantasies at her apartment. Honestly? John is basically just a composite of three different people anyway.

The whole thing feels like one fever dream cooked up by some incredibly lonely, sexually frustrated mind. Maybe someone else wants to dive into the deep psychoanalytic stuff, but what’s wild to me is how the parents act as these totally static, unchanging archetypes compared to that unstable trio of main characters. You hear about the dad being this raw, unapologetic guy back in his prime, yet now he's just getting judged for physically accosting someone. And the mother? She's framed as selfish and detached throughout his childhood, and when we finally meet her in the flesh, she hasn't changed a bit. Still the same.

Look, I’m not saying the interpretation is a stretch—there’s plenty of evidence there if you actually bother to look. But let's be real: if this were some pretentious French film, they would've thrown in at least one scene explicitly playing with metatextuality, probably loaded with a healthy dose of Barhes or Deleuze quotes just to feel important. 😁 Thank God "Boeing" isn't actually that kind of movie.

There’s actually this one scene that hits similar vibes—when John and Ben trade stories. The first guy drops this totally standard tale about a rough childhood—it's realistic, follows a straight line, and wraps up with that predictable emotional payoff. Then the second guy starts talking about burning down a greenhouse, but the whole thing is non-narrative, irrational, and offers zero actual insight. Ben doesn't even have a "reason" for setting the place on fire; he’s just following some weird "morality of nature." It's the perfect contrast: you've got a realistic story used to explain a life versus Ben’s non-representational, mystical vision about how impossible it is to truly grasp reality. To me, that’s exactly what the movie is doing. Don't get me wrong, there’s class commentary and sociological stuff in there, but it’s all secondary—basically just background noise at best.

Henry Campbell5 said:What's the deal with the knives? John-suov's old man was in the military, and those tactical knives belong to Ben. Then you've got the lawyer bringing up real estate investments in Manhattan—which makes sense, since Ben’s got an apartment over there.

Good catch—I totally missed those details. 👍

A whole lot of noise over nothing at all. 🍿

man, just translate all that nonsense you rambled about into American English for me ☕