Burning begins with the grand mystery called life. It is not because the film takes a genre structure and apparatus, but because the world that the film perceives and its operation arouses many questions. Every dichotomous way of thinking, such as existence and nonexistence, what is seen and unseen, reality and fantasy, and fiction and nonfiction, doesn’t help much to understand this world. The film asks the audience to follow Jongsu’s stream of consciousness. Making a living as a part-timer, he maintains an old house his father left and tries to write a novel. Was his reunion with Haemi an ember? Or was his encounter with her mysterious friend Ben a kindling? Amid these inscrutable people, Jongsu is swept away by complicated emotions, such as jealousy and inferiority, insecurity and frustration, and doubt and self-assurance. He even commits irrevocable things. Is it extinction or estrangement? The place where the film stops may be the tentative border of the world the director sees at the moment. [JEONG Jihye]