The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah. For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.
First released in 2000, Minari is a classic story of the pursuit of the American dream.
Taking place in the early 80s, the movie follows Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun), a South Korean immigrant who relocates his family from California to Arkansas. Jacob has purchased a farm and he plans to make a fortune selling Korean produce to restaurants in Dallas. (Dallas, I should mention, does have a very large Korean population so Jacob’s plan is not a bad one.) Jacob is enthusiastic and confident that his plan will succeed. His wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is a bit less confident. She doesn’t want to live in a mobile home and she worries about the health of her young son David (Alan Kim), who has a heart murmur. Monica feels that her husband has dragged them out to the middle of nowhere and that he has no idea what he’s doing. Jacob is determined to become a success and he even hires his first employee, Paul (Will Patton), a local eccentric who often walks up and down the highway with a cross on his back.
I have to admit that I was initially a bit cautious about watching Minari. I have family from Arkansas. When I was growing up, my family sometimes lived in Arkansas. (When I was growing up, we moved around so much that I used to just think of Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Colorado, and Texas as just being one big state that I called home.) Arkansas is one of those states that is usually not treated particularly kindly in the movies. For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by Minari. Jacob may be an outsider, as both an immigrant and a former Californian, but, for the most part, the people that he meets are kind and willing to help. Paul is especially an interesting character. Many movies would have treated Paul as a redneck joke but, in Minari, he’s given a certain dignity. The cinematography is wonderful, capturing the humid beauty of not just Arkansas but the midwest in general. Jacob and his family are 20th century pioneers, exploring what for them is a new and untouched land.
Eventually, Monica’s mother, Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), comes to stay with the family. She shares a room with David and it takes a while for David to get used to his grandmother. (David complains that she doesn’t act like a grandmother.) It also takes Soon-ja a while to get used to life in Arkansas. Youn Yuh-jung won a deserved Oscar for her performance here, playing a stranger in a strange land who ultimately inspires David to find his own inner strength. The scenes between Youn and Alan Kim are some of the strongest in the film. Towards the end of the film, Youn has a scene that truly left me in tears.
Minari is about the pursuit of the American dream but it’s also about the strength of family. Jacob is not always a sympathetic character but he proves himself in the end. The film ends on an ambiguous note but I choose to believe that Jacob eventually found his fortune.
Minari won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and, like many so many Sundance hits in the past, it went on to be nominated for Best Picture. It lost to Nomadland, despite Minari being a far superior film. That’s the Academy for you.
Through the Shattered Lens 