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From the very beginning, Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” casts a spell on the viewer, evoking images of human beings attempting to live in harmony with the natural world in the manner of Terrence Malick. A family car travels through a lush, green landscape of the United States, and the earth itself appears to be speaking to the characters and, through them, to the audience.
It is a classic immigrant story with specific, and in some cases, unique, new details added throughout. An immigrant Korean American family, led by a father, Jacob (Steven Yeun), and mother, Monica (Yeri Han), moved to California in the 1980s and worked as chicken sexers, separating baby chicks by gender. With their two American-born children, a serious and mature young lady named Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and a six-year-old boy named David (newcomer Alan S. Kim), they have relocated to a small Arkansas town in the hopes of establishing a 50-acre farm on their property there.
Culture clash is the overarching theme of this book, though it is not the only one. Chung, who held off on making this autobiographical drama until he had a string of critically acclaimed films under his belt, is clear on the story he wants to tell and the style in which he wishes to tell it. Monica and Jacob are at odds over their shared goals as a couple as well as their hopes and dreams for their future children. Every exchange is marked by the conflict between assimilation and independence, whether it is intimate and private or connected to a larger community that they are only just beginning to understand.
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Jacob has clearly bought into some version of “the American dream,” and he presents himself in the manner of a prototypical white American farmer from the middle of the twentieth century, complete with gimme cap, terse speech, breast pocket cigarette pack, and ambling gunfighter walk. Monica appears to be more conflicted, and it is clear from the way the two of them interact that she comes from a higher social class and is more at ease in urban settings than her brother. As the story progresses, we begin to wonder if she has any remorse about her decision to immigrate to America in the first place. Despite the fact that she’s willing, it’s a difficult road that never seems to get any easier.
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It is through the use of a different frame that everyday rituals come to life and become more interesting; this occurs in Chung’s film as well as in others. The couple debates whether to purchase a small farm in a community with a larger Korean American population or to remain in their current location and tough it out in relative isolation, a conversation that many couples would have in a similar situation, except that this one comes with a slew of additional difficulties. What kind of church do we attend? Should we even bother going to church? As we move forward in our efforts to make new friends with people who do not share our cultural heritage, how far should we go? The problems listed above are ones that people who have grown up in a monoculture don’t think about very often, if at all.
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There are times when the film loses its grip on the audience, relying a little too heavily on atmospheric nature shots and a haunting score that appears to be performed on a slightly out-of-tune upright piano, and occasionally deferring conflicts to a later point in the timeline when the viewer might want a little more investigation into them right then. Chung’s ability as a storyteller, on the other hand, remains firm. Throughout every moment and conversation, there is a ring of truth. Those who are at their best are imbued with a complexity and contradiction that suggests that there is more to human interactions than the advice we received as children. Anybody who has been on the receiving end of this type of behavior will recognize a scene after church in which young David is casually racially insulted by a young white boy who then immediately speaks to him as a friend and invites him over to a sleepover as a true story. Everyone in this film, including the adults, is still in the process of learning how to behave appropriately.
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The supporting characters are all vividly depicted in the story. It is the great American character actor Will Patton who is outstanding as an evangelical Christian farmer who praises Jesus every minute of the day, and who can be glimpsed in one scene while walking along the country road with a large wooden cross on his back. (Jacob inquires as to whether he requires a ride, to which he responds that he does not.) Although Yuh-Jung Youn portrays Jacob’s grandmother, Soonja, who is brought in from Jacob’s home country to provide advice and childcare assistance, her performance is the standout performance. A cosmopolitan who always speaks her mind and is at ease with profanity, practical joking, and making moral/ethical decisions that could have serious ramifications without consulting Jacob or Monica, she is a live wire. (When Monica places a $100 bill in the church collection plate, presumably in order to make a big impression on their first visit, grandma deftly removes the bill from the collection plate.
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When it comes to capturing those fleeting moments when people act in accordance with their own internal compass, Chung has an uncanny ability to capture people acting in ways that may not make sense to an outside observer. In addition, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the author’s in-depth understanding of human behavior, as well as the way in which everyday objects and situations take on symbolic significance when we consider them in relation to the characters. This is a lovely, one-of-a-kind film.
Opening today, December 11th, for a limited qualifying run before a wider release in 2021, the film will be available for purchase online.
For more personality quizzes check this: Voyagers Quiz.
