Directed by Radik Eshimov. Written by Aizada Bekbalaeva and Dastan Madaldiev
A house fire becomes the talk of the town in Radik Eshimov’s Burning, a supernatural thriller wherein a woman, her husband, and her mother-in-law become the central characters in a theatre of makebelieve as the townspeople present their conflicting theories on how the fire started at their home, invoking old superstitions, gendered assumptions, and suffocating societal expectations.
As for facts, there’s about one: a while ago, Asel (Aysanat Edigeeva) and Marat (Ömürbek Izrailov) lost their son, and the tragedy hangs heavy over their home. Marat’s mother (Kalicha Seydalieva) travels to stay with them for a little while at Marat’s request, because Asel hasn’t been feeling herself lately, grief wrapped tightly around her.
From there, people speculate, and Burning divides itself into three parts through which the central events are revisited and rewritten. Characters change their entire personalities, power dynamics shifts, the motivations and roles turn on their heads.
Is the mother-in-law a dragon lady with supernatural abilities or a benevolent caretaker? Is Asel possessed by a demon, or in the grips of something much more sinister? Where’s Marat’s place in all this? No one can know for sure, but the townspeople aren’t shy to guess.
Writers Bekbalaeva and Madaldiev want you to guess along as well, and Burning offers a tense exploration of the nefarious influence of hearsay before exposing the greater danger of cultural constraints and how they can wreak more damage than any dark forces ever could.
This revisionist ploy at the heart of Burning is intriguing and effective, showing us how easily we fall prey to the whims of a narrator and their biases. It’s also just fun to see Edigeeva, Izrailov, and Seydalieva reinvent their characters just as you couldn’t believe them being any other way. If you love seeing how a line can be turned on its head based on how it’s read, run, don’t walk, to see Burning.
Then calamity strikes: Just as you’re in the grips of speculation and amped up for the conclusion, Burning turns away from the puzzling narrative that brought it so much momentum to instead embrace a simpler, albeit punchier, outlook.
This change might be more satisfying for some, but for a movie so invested in open-ended interpretation, it would have suited Eshimov’s movie to stay the course. You took all this time painstakingly folding a paper plane just so you could make it crash land on water.
Despite this, Eshimov proves himself a capable and confident director with this affecting story driven by well-designed and executed twists and punches. If he adds a little more daring, we’re really onto something.
Mikkel Frederiksen 