Rent Minari (2020)

Low-key but totally absorbing and universally relatable - Minari review by PD

A rare look at a Korean family trying to make a go of it in 1980s Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical, low-key piece is warmly observant and gently humorous but also doesn't shy away from the enormous strains the struggle places on the family. It's a very specific context but also universally relatable.

The opening shot of the family arriving at their new home—a dilapidated trailer sitting in the middle of a field - neatly subverts the white-picket-fence American Dream, and we're immediately aware that things are going to go very wrong between horrified wife Monica (Yeri Han) and her defiantly optimistic husband Jacob (Steven Yeun) for whom this marks a step up from the humiliation of working in a chicken hatchery. Jacob has big dreams of building out a small farm on his land, composed of Korean vegetables to cater to the growing Korean immigrant population in America, but the strains this puts on the relationship with Monica provides much of the focus of the film and is very well-handled. Another key development is, after a marital bust-up (neatly accompanied by the children making paper aeroplanes with 'don't fight' written on them - we've all been there), the arrival of Monica's mother, Soon-ja (Yuh-Jung Youn) from South Korea. Not your conventional grandmother, the cursing wily matriarch only adds more conflict: young David, in particular, resists her presence with all the (considerable) ammunition at his disposal. While predictably, the two misfits eventually form a bond, Minari expands upon this rather clichéd connection between grandmother and grandson (yes, Ozu’s Tokyo Story does come to mind) to tackle more substantive issues of what it means to cultivate a better life and what it takes for relationships to survive and thrive, even in the worst of times.

Chung's affection for his characters, and the Arkansas farmland where he grew up—always shines through, and there’s never a moment where you don’t root for and care for each family member. There’s even a certain fondness for Will Patton’s Paul, a batty evangelical farmer with stringy hair and big glasses, who carries a giant cross on Sundays ('this is my church' he says), a wild detail that could only come from real life (as apparently, Chung remembered it from his youth). He's neatly contrasted with the po-faced regular churchgoers who, for all their going-on about Jesus and the Second Coming and whatnnot, don't ever seem to lift a finger to help.

There's some less successful touches - young David's potentially serious medical condition is all a bit superfluous and not very well treated, and the significant new adversity which provides an anchor for the third-act climax is all a bit heavy; the film is also insufficiently clear about showing how the family crisis is resolved at the end. However all in all a very highly-accomplished, totally absorbing piece.

Very Enjoyable - Minari review by JP

This was a lovely film showing characters and a life we rarely get to see. It's an American slice of life that I know, being a Yank, but the British will find it

interesting and not the usual portrayal of life in the States. The cast is wonderful, and how they get children to be so convincing still amazes me.

Family roots - Minari review by TE

An enjoyable story that presents a variation on the standard version of the American Dream. Here it is a Korean family seeking to establish a farm in rural Arkansas, but the virtues extolled are the familiar ones: hard graft and optimism will triumph in the end.

There is a thread of evangelical Christianity that gives the film an unnecessary extra twist. The previous owner of the farmland committed suicide and the man hired as a farm worker insists on performing his own version of an exorcism. He spends his Sundays lugging a cross around the backroads.

The film's main strengths lie in the details of the family members' characters: the granny's profanity and eccentricity; the young boy's growing independence; and the relationship dynamics between the mother and the father.

The 'minari' plant, quietly sown by the grandmother, provides a satisfying metaphor for true roots.