OVP: Minari (2020)

Film: Minari (2020)

Stars: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-Jong, Will Patton

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Steven Yeun, Supporting Actress-Youn Yuh-Jong*, Original Screenplay, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

First off, can we all say "God bless" to every film festival screening that has been kind of enough to offer some of its content virtually (even if it's for the price of a ticket-that's how it should be).  I've done five such purchases in the past few weeks, and it's been such a privilege to sit down and watch a new movie.  I wish it was in a theater, but I know that's harder to do right now.  I will also say to any studios (cough Sony cough) being stingy about such screeners while trying to have "qualifying runs" in theaters that aren't open...and likely aren't getting that many attendees, I see you and my glare is icy.  One of the festival hits that I've seen recently is Minari, a meditative look at a Korean Family trying to have their American Dream in rural Arkansas.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is centered around the Yi family, who have moved to Arkansas from the city & are trying to make a life as farmers.  Husband Jacob (Yeun) is deeply committed to the idea, but his wife Monica (Han) is reluctant, particularly considering their son David's (Kim) heart murmur, which is more vulnerable in a farm away from the rest of the world.  A third of the way through the movie, Monica, impossibly lonely, has her mother Soonja (Youn) come to live with them, and she invites an element of adventure to the children's lives, while also underlining the problems that persist in Jacob & Monica's marriage, as they have divergent views on what their lives & family should be like.

Most of Minari is told through the eyes of David, though they are a knowing pair of eyes.  The film is autobiographical (director Chung lived on a small farm in rural Arkansas before eventually going to Yale and becoming a filmmaker), and you can see in the way he moves his camera that we aren't actually getting the story through the eyes of a young boy, but instead Chung gives us the feeling of a man rifling through an old photo album, understanding more about his parents & grandmother than he realized at the time.  The way the camera seems to linger on his parents when onscreen David's interest has probably moved on underlines the best aspect of Minari-that we can never truly know our parents.

The film is a bit too neat-and-tidy for my taste-while it's sentimental (you'll probably cry at parts), it's also occasionally too detached, and as a result the performances onscreen (Yeun & Youn are the best-in-cast for my money, but no one is slouching), don't ring as true as they should've; the director doesn't let you feel quite the complete connection with any given character, even if you understand as the film progresses that these are just real people, not cinematic creations.  It's rare that we see a movie about genuinely average, normal people & the struggle that comes with run-of-the-mill life, and while it's refreshing, in order to keep that distance the film sometimes suffers in forming stronger connections onscreen.  That said, it's a lovely, melodic film, and the score by Emile Mosseri is rich (and a worthy companion to his genius work last year on The Last Black Man in San Francisco), and would not bring shame to Oscar if he so chose to invite the movie.