I’m sick of Western fiction, so I asked ChatGPT for recommendations of Korean films. Amongst many, it recommended Burning, a 2018 film I had never heard of. It turned out to be one of the most mesmerizing movies I’ve ever seen.

We follow a protagonist whose mother abandoned him and whose father is on trial for having assaulted someone. The protagonist lives in a rural house near the border with North Korea. He works odd jobs for a living. Right off the bat, he meets a childhood friend of his, a cute young woman who seems to get by on odd jobs and men’s attention. Shortly after they meet and share an intense moment, she announces she’ll leave on a trip to Africa. The protagonist ought to go regularly by her tiny apartment to feed a cat that he can’t even see.

When the young woman returns, she’s not alone. She’s accompanied by a rich-looking Korean guy (played by Steven Yeun, usually most known for American movies), and the protagonist immediately slides into that sickening humiliation known well by those who’ve liked or loved a girl only for her to casually force you to see her act intimately with another man as if you were meant to endure it. The rich guy’s smiles and comments seem to suggest he enjoys inflicting that kind of humiliation. What is an isolated, poor young man who has fallen in love with chaotic, existentially-damaged young woman supposed to do when she’s being absorbed into a superior man’s life?

That summarized plotline disguises a lot of what the movie actually is about. What you’re truly living throughout this movie is uncertainty. Someone’s inadequate access to reality, knowing that you’re barred from possessing enough authority, information, or self-knowledge. The young woman’s cat exists, or maybe it doesn’t. The childhood well where the young woman claims she once fell exists, or maybe it didn’t. The protagonist is supposed to have rescued her from that well, except that he can’t remember doing so. The protagonist is supposedly a writer who cannot write. For most of the film he observes, accumulates details and fails to turn them into meaning.

The sense of place in this movie is sublime. You feel right there. The scenes are allowed to linger as much as they need without having to rush to the next bit of conflict.

By the end, two opposite interpretations remain open and equally valid. The young woman was at the bottom of an invisible well, depending upon another lonely and uncertain person to confirm that she was real. Whether that well existed doesn’t seem as important as the fact that’s how she experienced herself. What we call reality is just the story we become willing to act upon.