Fragmented Narrative Ideology: Analyzing the Narrative Strategies and Audiovisual Language in Li Changdong's 'Burning'

Abstract

This study focuses on Li Cangdong's "Burning" and explores the logic of fragmented narrative and audiovisual language. In the narrative innovation of contemporary cinema, the film breaks the traditional framework with non-continuous shot grouping, allowing the audience to independently piece together the truth of Hye-mi's disappearance through the subjective perspective of the protagonist Jong-soo, the memory flashbacks, and the white space of other people's narratives. Visual symbols such as the well and the plastic shed form an intertext with the sound-picture dichotomy of the music and the special filming technique of the camera, alluding to the philosophical ideas of class violence, the lack of discourse, and the anxiety of individual existence. The burning imagery not only refers to the disintegration of the rural economy, but also symbolizes the desperate breakout of the underclass under class oppression. The film refuses to answer the question directly, but uses the fragmented narrative to guide the audience to think about the class division and existential dilemma in modern society, which provides a new way of thinking for the study of film narrative and audiovisual language.