Minari (2020)
dir. Lee Isaac Chung
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 A24
The emotional exuberance of Minari is exemplified in a scene midway through the film. The Korean-American Yi family have made their way to rural Arkansas from California. The father, Jacob, has bought a huge plot of land with the dream of starting a farm in order to grow Korean vegetables to sell in surrounding urban centers with large Korean immigrant populations. He will save money by digging his own well for irrigation, avoiding using the county water supply or paying an exorbitant fee to a local “water dowser” who promises to be able to divine a water source using his dowsing rod. Jacob is skeptical at best, believing the man is little more than a con artist.
Instead, Jacob uses his brain, explaining to his five-year-old son David that water is likely to be in a down-hill location, close to trees. They pick the most likely spot and start to dig. When they hit water, Jacob yells in triumph at his success. Little David mimics his father. The two go back and forth shouting at the top of their lungs in celebration. It’s an ecstatic moment for the Yis and for us.
Minari is a semi-autobiographical story from writer and director Lee Isaac Chung, who was born in Denver and grew up in the 1980s in Lincoln, Arkansas. It’s a beautifully crafted family drama that believes in the ethos of the American Dream. We see the Yi family do what millions of others, from every corner of the globe, have done for hundreds of years; they’ve come to build a new life in the land of opportunity.
But Chung’s film isn’t all determined striving met with deserved success. The Yi family experiences their fair share of tragedy, internal conflict, and casual racism from the locals. Jacob is an idealist; his wife, Monica, is more resistant to her husband’s grand plans. The pair moved from South Korea to improve their fortunes and start a family.
After years of working as chicken sexers – looking at baby chicks’ sex organs to separate them into male and female – at a hatchery in California, Jacob convinces Monica to move to Arkansas, where land is cheap. They can both get jobs at a chicken hatchery and Jacob can work his farm in his spare time. In three years, Jacob surmises, they can quit the mind-numbing work at the hatchery and earn a living from the farm.
When Monica sees the trailer home that Jacob has secured for them on their land, she is crestfallen. A home with wheels is not what her husband promised her. David and his slightly older sister, Anne, both love the mobile home. The parents agree to bring Monica’s mother from South Korea so she can help with childcare and to bring a little piece of home to Arkansas.
There are many layers of culture clash examined in Minari, some within the Yi family itself. David and Anne have only ever known life in America, and both speak fluent English and Korean. Their parents speak some English, but are more comfortable communicating in their native language. Little David, who has never met his maternal grandmother, is dismayed that she isn’t what he thinks of as a normal grandma. She doesn’t bake cookies, and she curses, and she wears men’s underwear. Worst of all to David, she “smells like Korea.”
Meanwhile, Jacob is dealing with his own form of culture clash. He’s hired a local eccentric, a man named Paul, to help on the farm. Paul is a Korean War veteran and is deeply religious. He speaks in tongues, offers to perform an exorcism to cleanse Jacob’s land, and carries a giant wooden cross on Sundays as a form of worship. Just like with the water dowser, Jacob is bemused by Paul, but the two men work well together.
It’s the small moments in Minari that make it as special as it is. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne gives the whole film a warm glow. The nature shots of the wide-open spaces of rural America – Oklahoma stands in for Arkansas – are gorgeous. Chung layers his film with a constant pastoral buzz. In almost every scene, we hear constant birdsong and chirping crickets.
Small character moments go a long way, too. At one point, Monica begins to cry when her mother arrives with Korean staples that aren’t readily available in America. She is overcome at the site of anchovies, making the idea of homesickness palpable. Touches of humor, as well, are handled with expert care. David and Grandma finally make a connection, over Mountain Dew of all things. Anne describes the soft drink to the newly arrived family member as mountain water, very good for your health.
Steven Yeun and Han Ye-ri give the strained marriage of Jacob and Monica a lived-in quality. We know that these two people love each other, but we’re never quite certain if their love alone will be enough to make the marriage last. Alan Kim is adorable as the irascible David; Youn Yuh-jung is wonderful as David’s foil, the foul-mouthed, sarcastic Grandma. Veteran character actor Will Patton turns in an intensely idiosyncratic performance as Paul.
My only reservation with Minari – the title comes from a plant used in Asian dishes which Grandma grows along a stream on the Yi’s property – is the climactic event in the movie’s final minutes. The Yis overcome so much adversity – at one point, Jacob’s well runs dry and he must spend money he doesn’t have on county water – that the final tragedy feels like too much. It involves Grandma, who is dealing with the repercussions of a recent health scare. It’s an event that feels like piling on in order to close the picture out with a dramatic bang.
The small character moments are what make Minari so magical. There is devastating human drama when Jacob and Monica come to terms with the possible end of their marriage when Monica feels that Jacob cares more about his farm than his family. The one big, dramatic tragedy in its final minutes aside, Minari delivers an eloquent and moving variation on the theme of the American Dream and human perseverance.
Why it got 4 stars:
There are trials within Minari, to be sure, but for the most part, this movie is a breath of fresh air. It is focused on people reaching for the American Dream, at a time when many of us wonder if such a thing even exists.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Minari is set in the 1980s. There is one scene in which the Yis attend a local church, and one child bluntly asks David a racist question about his face. The movie handles it matter-of-factly; this is something that happens (presumably to Lee Isaac Chung personally), and David doesn’t quite know how to respond.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Watched via screener disc.