Minari
A24On the 92nd Academy Awards, Bong Joon-ho climbs upstage in Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, accepting his second of three Oscars for Best Director. There, he states a quote that rings true to many aspiring and accomplished creatives in the world, ‘The most personal is the most creative.’ He then calls out a fellow acclaimed filmmaker, Martin Scorsese, who is behind the expression. Flash-forward to the present day, Korean-American filmmaker, Lee Isaac Chung receives similar acclaim with his semi-autobiographical family drama Minari. Although it doesn’t have the harmonious surprises and morbid hilarity of Bong Joon-ho’s multi-layered parable, Lee Isaac Chung is rather more reflective in his approach and miniscule in scope, turning his most personal experiences to one of the sincerest slices of life in cinema.
Minari revolves around the Yi family as they settle in on an empty field of grass in the American countryside. Steven Yeun’s Jacob, the family patriarch, wants to grow a farm with only growing Korean vegetables. His wife, Monica (Han Ye-ri), initially opposes the idea of investing nearly all of their hard-earned wealth in moving to a trailer with wheels in the middle of nowhere and giving the entire family a blood-curdling false alarm of a tornado. However, she eventually agrees to see where his aspiration will lead, but only if Monica’s mother, Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) – who still resides back in their homeland and has no living relative – will come to live with them. Jacob ultimately agrees. Soon, Soon-ja arrives in their leaky little American home to the dismay of the youngest member of the family, David (Alan Kim), who shows a great disdain over his ‘Korean-smelling’ potty-mouthed grandma/roommate.
Minari is very simple in concept. It’s more tonally and ideally comparable to Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. Both are American films from an Asian-American filmmaker’s own experiences with the film being spoken in Korean and Mandarin respectively, and with grandmothers many audiences can’t help but love. Some people definitely won’t find anything particularly of note with a mundane premise, but there will still be audiences who beg to differ, who are able to see and sympathise with the drama unfolding through Lee Isaac Chung’s lens, prompting audiences to come to love Wang’s personal tale.
It’s Chung’s memories that serve as the emotional backbone of its screenplay, and a well-eyed viewer will notice how he successfully revives these old videotapes in the back of his mind. Many will instinctively surmise that some of the scenes in the film are almost exactly how they happen in the past. The most notable and non-spoilery one happens after the mistaken tornado incident. David and his older sister, Anne (Noel Kate Cho) fly paper airplanes with ‘Stop Fighting’ etched in them while their parents are still screaming their heads off at each other and ignoring their planes of pleas. There’s unmistakable innocence with the way these children fold those crafty messengers before they send them out. The spouses’ quarrel blasting past the walls of their rooms isn’t quite audibly comprehensible to the juveniles’ ears, but it’s obvious enough for them to take action.
Minari is engulfed with plenty more moments of childlike wonder and wholesome nostalgia all over, and most of them are centered on the dynamic between David and Soon-ja. Now it’s crystal clear that David is young Lee Isaac Chung himself when he was still foolishly pranking his ‘not-real’ grandma with a tiny bowl of nicely warm Mountain Dew. It is no shock to see their relationship is the most fleshed out in the film, as we see this connection between them form and strengthen until they’re almost inseparable. Youn Yuh-jung is effortless in playing the wrestling-loving halmoni. Soon-ja is the stubborn yet vital heart of Minari, and her close bond with David is something that will deeply resonate with many people, especially Asians, around the world who will, no doubt, spot parallels in the personalities between Soon-ja’s and one’s own relative.
But if Minari is constructed within its director’s memories, would parts of the film be left least explored because he can’t fully recall these characters in several particular moments? Well, yes, there are aspects and individuals around him that don’t get the same treatment as David’s grandma. One could wish for there to be more time diving into the parents’ relationship. How about the older sister, Anne who is massively underused for the entire film? Some will wonder if these underdeveloped elements are the cause of memory lapses in Lee Isaac Chung’s part. However, one can’t always envision everything. One’s mind is one’s mind only; how Chung perceives something is his only view of how he sees things. Certainly, there are altercations in what actually transpired, but they’re not adequate to defy the poignancy Chung has greatly established. This is his film about his own family, and one cannot argue that he should show more when his brain and our brains can only show enough.
Perhaps this is what makes Minari so striking and one of 2020’s best films. Lee Isaac Chung has created a two-hour video album with him recollecting and storing moments in time that he remembers so deeply that it becomes something he should share and not forgotten.. Like everything else, some things are taken out of us without us even knowing, so it’s best if he relays them out to the world. But even if these memories shown don’t belong to us, Minari feels and is universally familiar to one’s own experience. This review is telling you how strongly vivid the emotions Chung is able to convey that it’s more than sufficient enough to believe it’s also our memories. Perhaps, this is him reminding us not to forget our own.
