‘Heartbeat’ Netflix Movie Review - Lee Chang-dong's Short Film Leaves You Cold

An eight-year-old boy named Chul (Kim Geonu) tells his teacher that he is going to the bathroom and then starts running towards his home. That's the basic premise of Lee Chang-dong's 2022 short film Heartbeat, now streaming on Netflix, and the film itself is indeed quite simple, forgettable, and fluffy. But Lee tries to inflate his simplistic, obvious drama through ostentatious techniques, shooting the whole thing in what appears to be one continuous take—a conceit that self-consciously demands to be admired and cherished. He also touches on subjects like corporate greed, mass layoffs, and depression, but these remain little more than ideas hovering over the drama. Workers take to the streets to protest the layoffs; their voices and figures drift into the background as Chul makes his way through the city. We also learn, through a single line of dialogue delivered by a stranger, that Chul's father (Sol Kyung-gu) is among the workers who have been fired and joined the protest. The film unfolds during the COVID-19 pandemic, so everybody wears a face mask except Chul, whose mask falls to the ground when he climbs the school fence to make his escape in a hurry.

Chul, however, does more dangerous stunts than simply scaling a fence. He climbs out of a neighbor's fifth-floor window and cautiously makes his way along a long, narrow platform and the air-conditioning units to enter his own apartment through a window because the door is locked. Why is Chul taking such a risk? Because his mother (Jeon Do-yeon) is suffering from depression, and he saw a suicide note before leaving for school that morning. During class, the teacher asks the students to name great people, and when one of them suggests "mother" on the grounds that mothers are hardworking housewives, Chul suddenly remembers his own mother and the suicide note and calls her on her mobile. But her phone is switched off, and fearing the worst, he starts running towards his building. Why is Chul's mother depressed? Did someone close to her die? Does it have something to do with COVID isolation (which seems unlikely since everybody is talking to one another freely), or is she worried about how the household will manage and how the bills will be paid now that her husband is unemployed (again, this seems unlikely, as the layoff appears to be fairly recent while her depression seems to have been going on for much longer)?

Of course, all you can do is come up with your own theories because Lee peddles typical arthouse clichés, with politics hanging on the screen like decorative ornaments while the drama itself comes across as flat and thin. This is what turned you off about his plodding 2018 psychological thriller Burning. In the end, all you take away from Heartbeat is its seemingly continuous-shot gimmick. You aren't filled with warmth, and Lee's world, too, quickly evaporates from your mind. If an ECG monitor had been attached to my body while watching the film, it might have registered nothing more than a flat line. Nothing here moves you; the short film leaves you unstirred, unimpressed, and unresponsive.