Movie Breakdown: Minari
Pre-Screening Stance:
I’ve heard nothing but great things about Minari. Let’s do this already.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s mostly auto-biographical Minari is a fantastic film. It’s centered around a Korean family in the 80s who decide to make a jump from California to Arkansas so that the patriarch, Jacob Yi (Steven Yuen), can start a farm. This plan – which reminded me of all the people who once went West in search of a better life – is a long shot on paper and then a seemingly even longer one in real life when Jacob, his wife Monica (Yeri Han), and their two kids, Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim), arrive in the Ozarks. Their prefab home is in OK at best shape, they’re very far from the nearest town (where they still have to maintain laborious day-jobs as chicken sexers), the previous owner of their land failed miserably at turning it into a farm, and they don’t really have a lot of money. Help arrives though, and it comes in the form of two oddballs. The first is Monica’s plucky mother, Soon-ja (Youn Yuh Jung), who helps take care of the kids and cut through the ever-building tension between Jacob and her daughter, and the second is a very religious, very socially awkward man named Paul (Will Patton), who manages to convince Jacob to let him work on the farm. Obviously, Jacob and his family are the focus in Minari, but the real stars of it are Soon-ja and Paul. Talk about amazingly written characters. Also, Jung and Patton turn in award-worthy performances.
Additional details, I think, are better left for the screen, so I’ll wind down here. Expect to want to root hard for the Yi family, and to also cry and laugh and get entirely swept up in their efforts to make a better life for themselves. Also, while the immense amount of heart that drives this film is what makes it shine, I do think there’s also a lot more to take from it – metaphors about family and perseverance and a look at the trials and tribulations of immigrants trying to make it in America. This made best of lists last year, and now that it’s getting a wide release, it’ll do it again here in 2021. See it as soon as you can.
Minari will be in theaters this Friday, and then on VOD on February 26.
One Last Thought:
It’s interesting that this is getting a wide release alongside Judas And The Black Messiah. Not because they’re similar at all, but because they each show a different side of racism. The Yi family doesn’t have anyone act maliciously towards them, but they do encounter a variety of ignorant questions, like when the young boy has a peer bluntly-but-earnestly ask him why his “face is so flat.”
