Movie Reaction: Minari

Formula: Little Miss Sunshine - the Road trip + Farming

 

I am out of practice on these proper Movie Reactions. This will be only my fourth one in a year. I've done hundreds of Delayed and Quick Reactions in that time, but I like these to be a bit more thorough and structured. Hopefully I'm not too rusty.

 

I wonder if Minari is actually going to be hurt by being an awards contender. I know I went in with some lofty expectations because of it. I've been hearing for months about how good Stephen Yeun is in it. The Twitter fury over the Golden Globes calling it a Foreign Language film had people fiercely performative about how it's a very American movie that isn't being shown proper respect*. So, I was weirdly disappointed when the movie I got was "only" a nice Sundance family drama. It feels as much like the mostly ignored The Florida Project as the Oscar hit Little Miss Sunshine.

 

*Side Note: I get the initial irritation about how the Globes nominated Minari, but didn't we already go through this 2 years ago with The Farewell? It's a strange rule, but it is consistent. And I think it reveals as many biases in the complainers as in the HFPA. With such a small voting body, is there really that much danger of it being "othered" in the acting and directing categories by the voters? That's not rhetorical. I'm actually curious.

 

The film is about the Yi family and set in the mid-80s. The parents, Jacob (Stephen Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han), are Korea immigrants with two entirely American children. The youngest, David (Alan S, Kim) has a heart murmur that makes his mother especially worry. Jacob dreams of becoming a farmer of Korean vegetables and moves the family from California, where they were pretty comfortable, to 50 acres of undeveloped land in Arkansas. Monica is not very excited about this and worries about the distance from the hospital (Same, girl. Same). Eventually, they invite Monica's mother (Yuh-jung Youn) over from Korea to help watch the kids. The plot is a mix of Jacob struggling to make the farm work, the strain of Jacob and Monica's marriage, and David bonding with his grandmother. There's even room for a little quirk. Darryl Cox shows up as an eccentric neighbor who helps the family out and the grandmother, as David likes to point out often, doesn't act like other grandmas, with her love of professional wrestling and indifference about swearing in front of the kids.

 

The plot has a lot of fairly familiar family and professional drama, so the film is really propped up by the strong performances. It's hard not to root for Stephen Yeun's Jacob. He's a hard-working and loving father, even though he's stern and bullish at times. Yeri Han avoids being the nagging wife, despite her role largely being about disapproving of Jacob's decisions. Alan S. Kim is only about 7, so I mostly have to credit him for being a cute kid who isn't distractingly precocious. I was more impressed with Noel Cho as the older child, Anne. She's the one who quietly keeps the trains running on time in the family, looking out for her brother while her parents are busy working hard. The main reason I compare this film to Little Miss Sunshine is because Yuh-jung Youn reminds me so much of the Alan Arkin role in that movie. She gets most of the funny and sweetest moments in the film. I'd say she's right behind Yeun in the Oscar discussion for the film as the breakout supporting character.

 

I'm still digesting the end of the movie. It isn't as wholly satisfying as I wanted. It smartly leaves something to the imagination and suggests more than it confirms. I suspect I'll like it more with some time. A few key relationships felt too unresolved, and there's a climactic last twist of the knife that's just plain cruel. Overall though, this movie is a nice take on the American dream. It's hard to think of another movie that's quite like it. I mean, it's mostly in Korean yet it's about a farmer wearing a red baseball camp who is also an immigrant. It's certainly not a lie to say that it's a film about the American dream. It just isn't the American dream exactly as we see it in other films.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend