I don't know what's happening recently but in just three years we got not one but TWO fantastically successful adaptation of Haruki Murakami's stories.
You may have heard about DRIVE MY CAR recently, but for my money BURNING is slightly better. However, it's not fair to compare them both because each deal with an aspect of Murakami works: DRIVE MY CAR is more matter-of-fact, psychological, obsessed with jazz, sleek cars, and traumas.
Meanwhile, with BURNING, Lee Chang-Dong highlights the darkest and fantastical corners of Murakami's stories - from which sometimes there are no escapes and the characters are trapped, disappear. Contrary to DMC, BURNING does not have a nice little resolution. Where DMC is very wordy, BURNING is mutic and hermetic and leaves you with more questions than answers.
In any case, both directors have had the good sense to adapt his short-stories, rather than his HUGE novels, and that is maybe what makes them so successful, adding little details here and there that prove that they know very well Murakami's "oeuvre" and are really respectful of its tropes: women who disappear, loneliness, invisible cats, sex, whisky, jazz, the longing for a long lost love, the longing for meaning...
