Suffering from similar fates as other 2020 films such as News of the World, Land, and Nomadland is Lee Isaac Chung’s breakthrough Minari. This movie tells a familiar story in a way that is unique but ultimately ineffective. I say that tongue-in-cheek because my favorite film of the year (at the time of this post) is News of the World, which fails to escape many of the traps these other three movies fall into. And that’s not even to say that News of the World is a great film. It’s a very good film that earned quite an affinity in a reasonably drab 2020.

While there have been some extraordinarily original and memorable films of the year, including Da 5 Bloods, The Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Judas and the Black Messiah, Promising Young Woman, Mank, One Night in Miami, and First Cow, Minari isn’t quite one of them. While it’s a good film, I fear it will continue to receive too much praise for essentially retelling the all-too-familiar story of the pursuit of the American Dream.

Minari feels like a Terrence Malick movie in terms of tone and setting. It is exquisitely set in the heartland of Arkansas in the mid-1980s. In our story, the Yi’s, a Korean immigrant family from California, move to Arkansas, where Jacob (Steven Yeun – AMC’s The Walking Dead) has purchased 50 acres of cheap land. He hopes to turn this land into a farm where he can harvest fruits and vegetables to sell to merchants throughout Arkansas and Texas. It isn’t quite fool’s gold that he’s chasing, but we learn early that the previous tenants were forced to sell the property because it was deemed uninhabitable. While this doesn’t deter Jacob, it does give the audience a bit of foreshadowing by telling us, if nothing else, that this won’t be the smoothest of rides.

Jacob’s wife Monica (Yeri Han – Champion) lets it be known what she thinks of the move across the country when she sees, for the first time, the makeshift trailer that she, her solemn, adolescent daughter Anne (Noel Kate Cho), and brutally honest six-year-old son David (Alan Kim) now call home. There is strife in the marriage between Jacob and Monica early on, but there is also much love. She did not want to leave California for an unknown location and situation. Still, he reminds her that the life they were living (where they both worked as chicken sexers, a skillless and mindless job where they each spent all day determining the gender of newborn baby chicks, separating the females for both their egg-laying ability as well as their taste while killing the males. She agrees with this, though she doesn’t necessarily agree that there was a need to be so extreme in their change. While Jacob has faith in his ability to cultivate the land, she wonders if throwing all their money into something so unproven is wise.

While the movie’s trailer attempts to tell its story, the characters make this otherwise unmemorable movie stand out. This is the first time the beloved Glenn from the hit television series The Walking Dead has ventured out alone. Many of his diehard fans (one of whom I’m one of) will see this movie strictly because he is the central character. While his performance is noteworthy, he and Han allow Kim’s David and Oscar shoo-in (and possible winner) Yuh-Jung Youn to shine. Youn enters the picture 30 minutes into the movie as Monica’s mother, Soonja. Dazzling the screen as a filterless old woman who doesn’t speak a lick of English and loves playing cards, drinking Mountain Dew, and speaking her mind, David, who, in meeting Soonja for the first time in his life, says directly to her and the family that “she smells Korean.”

In another scene, he tells her she “doesn’t act like a grandmother.” Indeed, she does not, but her wisecracking performances ease the tension in a movie that could otherwise be wrought without it. David suffers from a heart condition that isn’t necessarily super serious but could be without regular monitoring and visits to the doctor’s office. Soonja and David clash in bizarre, humerous, and tender scenes throughout the film. What Chung does well is advance their relationship, but not in a perfectly tangent way. There are bumps along the way. Chung was also smart enough to realize that the dynamic between these two actors was charismatic and, likely, made it much more of a focal part of the story than initially intended. Here you have Yeun, the most marketable actor that Chung has ever worked with before and, while not necessarily making him a side character, takes him out of the main picture more than he probably intended.

Similar to Soonja’s almost comic relief to the seriousness of the ups and downs between Jacob and Monica, Jacob and his farm, and Monica in her difficulty in transitioning from an urban location to a rural one in which there are few neighbors and much fewer people in their radius who are Korean-born is the forever optimist and evangelical Paul (Will Patton – Remember the Titans, Armageddon). Paul is a hired hand who continues to tell Jacob that everything will be okay despite the realities of brutal heat, the inability to till the land because of lack of water, and customers who pull out of handshake deals. His faith in the lord is taken to a new level one Sunday afternoon when the Yi’s are driving home from church. It’s a scene you must see to believe, and I won’t spoil it. He is the perfect foil to the perpetually angry Jacob, who seems to feel like the world is forever against him.

Life proves to be beautiful and cruel, often simultaneously, for the Yi’s. Relationships are questioned, and priorities are challenged as Jacob and Monica attempt to make it work as a couple and family unit. What sacrifices are they willing to make, and at what cost? Is their marriage a partnership, or is it one in which the needs of one repeatedly take precedence over the other? Do they have the resources to make it in this new place, or is the existence of handling baby chickens all that this life has for them?

Minari is not a fun film by any sense of the word, yet you won’t feel bogged down by its seriousness and relentless tone. Its gravity and sense of dread that Jacob, Monica, and Anne continually feel are countered enough by respites of hope and faith offered by Soonja, David, and Paul. In the end, pursuing the American Dream with the real obstacles makes the end journey all the more worthwhile…if you can ever get there.

Plot 7/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 8.5/10
84.5%

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