Review: ‘Minari’ Lays the Roots of the Immigrant Experience
“The minari will grow well here.”
Minari can grow almost anywhere. It’s a resilient plant that flourishes in the most inhospitable environments, but it’s unique in that the first crop needs to wither for the subsequent yields to prosper. It takes time. It takes a period of hardship. And it takes sacrifice. But what comes after is a crop that spreads beyond its small beginnings into something rich and far-reaching. What came before laid the roots and cultivated the soil for the next generation to succeed, and within this humble plant, Lee Isaac Chung has found an apt metaphor for the immigrant experience in his film, Minari.
After years of chicken sexing in California, Jacob, the patriarchal figure played by Steven Yeun, has ambitions of starting a Korean vegetable farm. With the family’s savings, he buys a piece of untilled land in rural Arkansas and settles into a dilapidated trailer home, bringing his wife Monica (Yuri Han), his two children, David and Anne (Alan Kim & Noel Cho), and Monica’s grandmother, Soonja (Yuh-jung Youn), with him. Breaking new ground in middle America proves a test of wills for the family. Month after month, Jacob is met with continued set backs that cripple profitability, all the while life at home begins to fray from failed promises and the social lackings of living in the middle of nowhere.
Minari observers the “American Dream” through a family dynamic. While the film is largely told from the perspective of David — the film is a semi-autobiographical tale of Chung’s childhood — the film builds out a framework of interpersonal relationships that depicts the human impacts born out of the immigrant experience. Jacob’s desire to prove himself a success to his children comes at the expense of his marriage with Monic. Living in a multigenerational home makes for an endearing relationship between grandchild and grandparent in tandem with a matriarchal figure who guides and supports the parents. And the familial, codependent bond between brother and sister builds through shared experience as first generation Americans trying to reconcile two identities.
You could connect any two members of this family and find a unique dimension that colors a collective image of the immigrant experience. As much as the American Dream (whatever that means now a days) discourse is alive in our times, Minari excludes on the nose engagement with the surrounding institutions, opting to tell a personal story instead; this is not so much a story about levers in the system making an immigrant’s life more difficult as it is the toll such an endeavor costs. Now, when the American Dream feels so at risk, Minari reminds us of why it is so important to so many. Entire generations sacrifice themselves in the hope of a more prosperous tomorrow for their family, a sentiment not lost on Chung throughout his film as he makes sincere odes from the heart that are true and personal. It’s only in Minari’s final moments that we realize the significance of that humble little plant in the film’s title. As Lee Isaac Chung notes, “Minari is for everyone,” and we should value it as such.
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Addendum
While not fit for the structure of the review, I would be remised if I didn’t at least note the Emile Mosseri’s profound score accompanying the film. After composing the best score of last year with The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Mosseri returns with an equally distinctive effort that merits its own recognition. This time around, he makes use of a swooning theremin that rises and falls with a weary, ethereal sensitivity, complimented by soothing, harmonious vocals and a lively parlor piano. Mosseri’s soundscape makes the fields of Arkansas feel otherworldly, a place of great ambition and simultaneous alienation where the immigrant experience feels like an odyssey unto itself. It’s spectacular follow-up score for Mosseri that establishes his reputation as a premiere talent now and into the future.
