Minari (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

A Korean-American family moves from California to rural Arkansas in the hopes of setting up a home and farm of their own. The young father Jacob (Steven Yeun) and mother Monica (Han Ye-ri) work in a chicken farm/factory, identifying and separating chicks by sex. Their two children are Anne, a serious and more mature girl (Noel Kate Cho), and David, a more rambunctious six-year-old (Alan Kim). They are incredibly isolated, of course culturally but also geographically. The opening shots are of vast, green fields and a wide open sky. The world would seem to be theirs for the taking!

Autobiographical films like this -- especially ones about immigrant families -- can often be cloyingly sentimental, even to the point of opacity. It was my central problem with Roma, which often felt like we were being forced to watch the director thumb through old photo albums. Thankfully, this year's Belfast avoided that problem, and so does Minari. Writer and director Lee Isaac Chung clearly has a personal story to tell, but he knows how to make it accessible for others, even thoroughly entertaining. For a movie ostensibly about the American dream, culture clash, and difficult discussions of assimilation, Minari is also about intergenerational family relations and growing up in a strange new world.

Much like the sweeping cinematography that captures the beauty -- and dangers -- of life on the plains, the actors are also often wordless. When they do speak, it's a mixture of English and Korean, though mostly the latter. But in between, they work hard to tell a bountiful story. Jacob has clearly been practicing his American masculinity -isms, including his John Wayne shuffle and the cigarettes in his chest pocket. Monica comes from a higher social class and is now foundering in this rougher country life; she seems to want to head back to the cities, and maybe even back to Korea. They argue often over their vision for the farm and for their lives; they have differing parental techniques, and seem to have different goals in mind, especially regarding their children assimilating to the local community. One of the funniest scenes in the film comes when they visit a local church, where the reactions of the locals are at once horrifyingly problematic and hilariously honest.

While the film is nominally a coming-of-age dramedy about young David, its importance and good humor hinges on our realization that all the characters are in fact learning right from wrong and the best ways to behave with each other. The kids might be less savvy, but the adults are awkward too. The family's new neighbor, played by Will Patton, is an evangelical farmer whose delightful eccentricities are as specific as they are surprising. And then there's Monica's mother Soon-ja (a magnificent and brave performance from Youn Yuh-jung) who travels from South Korea to help watch the children while Monica and Jacob work. We learn a lot about Monica from her, as she is used to a fast-paced and loose-lipped social life in a big city. David doesn't think a grandmother should use so much profanity or engage in practical jokes, and his efforts at resistance only bring the family closer together.

Well, at least to some extent. There is a somewhat sobering confrontation looming before all is finished, and at least one nasty shock. But Minari is an unflinchingly hopeful and sweet movie, determined to absorb even a hesitant viewer into its lush imaginings. It understands people uncommonly well, and Chung is content to let us sit with his characters in silence and in awkwardness, just to breathe with them and get to know them better. Then, when they do act out, we laugh knowingly and caringly rather than out of total surprise.