Minari

Grade: A-

Writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s film Minari makes for a lovely companion piece to Nomadland. Both are reflective slices of life, off the beaten cinematic path. Minari opens with the Yi family arriving at their new home in 1980s rural Arkansas. It’s a single-wide trailer on 50 acres of land that the patriarch (Jacob) plans to make into a garden to grow and sell fruits and vegetables. But for now, the parents of this family of four just barely make ends meet by doing what’s called “chicken sexing” – separating and grouping baby chickens by gender.

“Gentle” and “simple” were two words that came to mind as I watched Minari, and a couple times, it almost gives Nomadland a run for its money in the scenic view department. Except for one case that I’ll talk about below, I never caught anybody acting. All of the scenes with just the family felt authentic and natural; it was very easy to forget that these are actors. I never sensed any machinery creaking at the screenplay factory.

Many conventional movies seem to dictate to us “here’s where the plot begins.” There’s a full-fledged arc that starts and finishes when the film begins and ends, to the point where it might feel like nothing worthwhile happens before or after the events of the movie. Not the case with Minari. We get a definite sense of Moments Before, Moments During That We Don’t See, and Moments After. We feel like we’re dropped in on their lives for a little while. It’s not busied up with some big through-line that gets completely resolved at the end. Sometimes it is light on plot, and simply sits back and lets these characters just live, breathe, do, and BE.

As Jacob, Best Actor Oscar nominee Steven Yeun helps carry the film with forthrightness – but really, it’s an ensemble effort. Yeri Han is awesome as Monica, the wife/mother, and Best Supporting Actress nominee Youn Yuh-jung as the grandmother is a spunky, sassy firecracker. Will Patton is an American character actor who had quite the career streak in the 90s and early 2000s, in movies such as Armageddon, The Spitfire Grill, Gone in 60 Seconds, Remember the Titans, and The Mothman Prophecies. He turns up here, acting up a storm as endearingly sitcommy comic relief. He provided me with a handful of audible belly laughs, and made me rewind a few times.

Minari is the name of a Korean plant that the grandmother and little boy plant down by their creek. I suspect Minari, the movie, will prove to be one of the top Best Picture nominees for me. At the end, I had a question that I would’ve loved to have had answered. I’m curious if any other viewers wondered the same thing.

Grade: A-