“Minari” is a modest, quiet film about a Korean-American immigrant family searching for the American Dream. Though the dream is never mentioned or explored. The director, Lee Isaac Chung, looks back on his own childhood in isolated, rural Arkansas, where his father Jacob (Steven Yeun) has moved his family from California to raise Korean vegetables and fruit.
They move into an ugly mobile ranch house with a large piece of land and make a living by working in a chicken hatchery, where they do skilled but tedious labor that involves checking the gender of thousands of chicks a day (the females are kept for eggs and meat, the males are discarded).
Jacob and his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) have a tense, conflict-ridden relationship — Monica desires more of a community than Jacob, and feels trapped — and the family’s economic problems continually oppress them. The dream of making a living from a farm is a big risk, and Jacob has problems with a dried-up well. They have two children; 7-year-old David (Alan Kim) has a heart murmur and is a bit too adorable. He’s the director’s vision of himself as a child, and I suppose Chung has the right to allow his perspective to dominate the story, and make him the most seductive character. His older sister Anne seems aware of all that is going around her, but she is barely developed.
The church dominates the white, rural milieu the family enters and, though there is a touch of unease and prejudice in a couple of encounters, the world they confront is mostly benign. The one white character who is given some dimension, Paul (Will Patton), is an eccentric Pentecostal farmhand who carries a large cross along dirt roads on Sunday, and is caring and committed to the somewhat distant Jacob, for whom he works.
There is one other significant character; Monica’s mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) comes to stay with them. She is snappy and lively — a card player, a wrestling fan, and someone who uses profanity. David shares a room with her, and is at first wary and rejecting (“She is not even a real grandma”), playing mean pranks on her. But they ultimately connect through a card game.
Still, the life of this immigrant family is a hard one. The director mutes their unhappiness by treating all that happens with restraint — no melodrama and no operatic emotions. Jacob is a man driven by a dream; he loves his family, but it’s not his primary passion. The gifted actor Steven Yeun displays bursts of anger when he feels thwarted by how difficult it is to make a living from the farm, but remains committed to his family.
The film has a lovely sense of everydayness, Jacob working the land, Monica cooking, David tottering around and exploring the farm. It’s a very specific, unsentimental immigrant saga — no large social issues about immigrant adjustment and assimilation are raised. It depicts a family who struggles to survive, and clearly has the inner resources and will to endure.
Streaming through February 25 at Film Forum.
