Burning questions and multiple answers: Ambiguous-unreliable narration and the uncertainties of truth and trust

This article explores how ambiguous-unreliable narration occurs in cinema as a distinct mode of unreliability. In defining ambiguous narration, we build on Semir Zeki’s neurobiological notion of ambiguity, from which we understand ambiguous narration as a mode that presents a series of questions consistently answered in mutually contradictory ways. We pay specific attention to Robert Vogt’s definition of ambiguous-unreliable narration in order to get a grip on the possible storyworlds presented by Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 feature film Burning. The film cues viewers to consider multiple interpretations of diegetic truth, each interpretation tapping into another possible world of events by positing questions with multiple non-hierarchable answers. As such, it becomes clear how Burning plays upon different concepts of ‘truth’. Drawing on the work of Vittorio Bufacchi and Kevin Reuter and Georg Brun, we can see how Burning ambiguates the line between correspondentist and coherentist readings of truth, thereby revealing something significant about truth-assigning strategies. We argue that Burning mimetically evokes post-truth phenomena, a periodizing concept in which the differentiation between fact-based truths, opinions and lies is blurry, creating an ambiguous information environment characterized by an uncertainty of what one can consider (un)trustworthy or (un)reliable. By proposing a cognitive narratological approach, we demonstrate how film storytelling can mimetically evoke this experience of uncertainty. In light of these findings, this research addresses the educative value of ambiguous-unreliable narration within fiction, especially within curricular programmes that incorporate media literacy training.