Minari is filled with disagreements large and small – between husband and wife, faith and disbelief, farmer and land. But perhaps none of ...
Minari is filled with disagreements large and small – between husband and wife, faith and disbelief, farmer and land. But perhaps none of them is as memorable as the tussle between a cheeky boy and his kooky grandmother.
Starting out as adversaries and ending up as allies even as the world around them crumbles, this unlikely duo provide the most tender moments in Lee Isaac Chung’s migration drama.
The Oscar-nominated movie, which is in both Korean and English, draws on the filmmaker’s own life. Minari revolves around a South Korean immigrant family rooted in a specific culture but also universal in its reaction to adversity.
In the 1980s, Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) and his wife, daughter and son move from California to rural Arkansas. The day job involves working in a hatchery and separating lucrative female chicks from useless male ones. Jacob hopes to prove his own worth in other ways. He indulges his passion for growing Korean produce on his land at an escalating financial and personal cost.
Although Jacob declares that his plot has “the best dirt in America”, his harried wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is unenthusiastic about the whole project – the move from California, the stultifying work, the impact the uprooting could have on their...
