Lee Isaac Chung’s farming fable Minari is at last available to the public, just in time for this year’s Academy Awards. It’s a peaceful, intimate film you maybe haven’t heard of. If you have, you’ll come for the farming but stay for playtime with Grandma.
Writer/Director Chung crafted a film loosely based on his young childhood of moving to America’s heartland from South Korea. The fictionalized story in the film tells of the Yi family moving to Arkansas to start a farm for Korean produce for sale in nearby cities.
Father Jacob (Steven Yeun) is struggling to get the crops started, and mother Monica (Yeri Han) has to work to pay for their house in the meantime. That means the long days for the kids are spent with their grandmother Soon-ja (the scene-stealing Youn Yuh-Jung) exploring the American wilderness together.
Trailers and learning about the premise suggest the focus is on the farming and the adaptation of being the only Korean family in an all-white, rural Arkansas town. That’s certainly part of it, but the major focus is actually between the kids and Soon-ja.
8-year-old Alan Kim, as David, is the part director Chung imagines himself as and he’s the real star of the show. His gradual acceptance of grandma (including sharing a room with her!) is the best part of the film, and the majority of the movie focusing on this relationship is most sincere.
Why does it work so well? Just as David must learn to love and support Soon-ja, the Yi family must accept Arkansas, and the town must accept them in return. It’s thematically strong to see these two conflicts played together.
The great fault, however, is the glacially slow pacing. Soon-ja doesn’t even arrive as a character until 35 minutes into the film, and the major conflict doesn’t start until halfway through. Having this choppy screenplay is the one drawback on an otherwise simple and sincere movie.
Minari has gone through a drawn-out release, first having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020 - over an entire year ago. Hoping to capitalize on the return of theatres, the producers ran out the clock if they wanted to qualify for this year’s Academy Awards.
Confused? Minari has long been speculated to be a contender at this year’s Oscars, but in light of the pandemic, the Academy announced last summer the deadline movies needed to be released by to qualify would be pushed back two months - so long as they were released in some way by February 26, 2021 (instead of December 31 last year) they would be eligible for awards.
Minari was supposed to open in summer 2020 and was continuously delayed hoping to play in cinemas worldwide. But the producers want to (hopefully) be featured at this year’s Oscars, including when the nominations are voted on next week.
So that’s why it took a year for the film to come out and why it's available now only for premium rentals. Normally I wouldn’t advise spending the $30-40 for a movie rental in my reviews, but there’s some good news: this one is reasonably priced.
Unlike the big studio pricing, Minari only costs $22.53, including tax. That’s a reasonable price for two or more people in your home to pay, and while this critic doesn’t personally think it’s the best picture of 2020, it’s certainly an excellent work of art that tells a quaint, heartfelt story.
I’m hesitant to compare this film to last year’s Best Picture-winning Parasite, also a film revolving around the work of a South Korean family. Minari is less intense and offers no twists or dramatic catharsis, but its technical filmmaking is just as beautifully produced and well-made.
The title Minari comes from a plant that grandmother Soon-ja grows in a nearby river - in real life, it’s one of the most popular vegetables in Korea and southeast Asia. But in the film, it’s an allegory for success - what is the right way and wrong way to get a job done?
That’s the lingering question the Yi family must answer, but so too is it the lingering question that defines “the American dream” and how to achieve it. For that matter, maybe that’s the secret to the Canadian dream too.
Minari
9 out of 10
PG, 1hr 55mins. Drama.
Written and Directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
Starring Alan Kim, Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh-Jung, Noel Kate Cho and Will Patton.
Now available for rental on various services, including TIFF Digital Lightbox and iTunes.
