SiftPop

by Austin Belzer, Contributing Writer

No sooner than the opening credits roll on Minari does Lee Isaac Chung enchant the viewer with the visual of a family packed into their car (well, an era-appropriate GM station wagon, in this case), traveling through the forests of rural Arkansas, almost as if to comfort both the viewer and the characters within. 

Minari is the classic immigrant story that I believe many of us grew up with, albeit with a few new elements. This immigrant story is about a Korean American family consisting of a father named Jacob (Steven Yeun) and a mother named Monica (Yeri Han) who immigrated from Korea in the 1980s and spent their early American lives in California sexing chickens, which is the process of separating baby chicks by their gender. Now, they have moved with their two children David (Alan Kim) and Anne (Noel Kate Cho) to rural Arkansas in the hopes of starting a farm that grows Korean crops.

Beyond the autobiographical nature of the film’s message, Lee Isaac Chung seems razor-focused on the story of this struggle of this immigrant family trying its best to remember their native country in a land that wants them to fully adopt American values. This struggle is both on screen through Jacob and Monica’s many fights, and off screen, lying in the implication of what being American truly means to someone who didn’t grow up there.

Jacob clearly thinks of “the American Dream” as an all-or-nothing approach. He’s fully adopted the mannerisms of American farmers of the 1980s, complete with the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket. Monica, on the other hand, is more resistant, finding comfort in the sprawling cities and lush apartments. As the story progresses, there is this general idea that Chung presents that makes the viewer wonder if the source of their fights aren’t actually about Jacob, but about the uncertainty of whether America is really a place of prosperity, or just like the land they’ve left.

Chung uses small moments to illustrate what isolationism truly is. As anyone who lives in any rural community knows, the small moments become big moments. Questions like, “Where should we shop for groceries?” or, “Who should I talk to?” are these long-drawn-out conversations that take weeks, if not months to finish and I appreciate this touch by Chung.

I think Chung’s effort in the small moments and his own experiences growing up do a ton to give the film an overall feel of authenticity. The best of the moments in the film are when Chung implies that there’s more to what’s being said to the children that will shape who they become as adults, like when they see their father eating with chopsticks and their mother eating with a spoon. Sure, it’s a small moment, but that will surely go on to confuse their children’s national identity and affect how they see the world. Or when David is casually hanging out at a friend’s house after church and is called a racial slur.

The cast surrounding this family are like caricatures. Paul (Will Patton) is amazing as this oddball Christian farmer who takes his faith to extreme levels, like carrying a cross to what I can only assume is the path from the church to his house every Sunday. But the breakout performance belongs to Soonja (Yuh-jung Youn), Monica’s mother, who is brought in from Korea to help take care of the kids while Jacob and Monica are out working. Unlike most grandmas, however, she isn’t exactly proper. She often watches wrestling, teaches the kids how to gamble in a great scene, and curses enough to make a sailor blush. 

Chung’s awards frontrunner Minari highlights his ability to capture the tiny moments of life, while also exploring the larger implications of those moments. Shortly put, Minari is a film you should not miss and will surely go down as an American classic.

Grade: A+