NB Reviews: "Minari"

I'm on a quest. A quest to review all 8 of this years nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture before Oscar night. This, in my opinion, was an exceedingly good batch of nominees. I loved almost all of the films (and I've already reviewed the one I didn't like). So, let's talk about Minari (Dir. by Lee Isaac Chung).

The List So Far:

8. Nomadland

7. Sound of Metal

6. Minari

(Heavy, heavy spoilers)

Monica Yi has not been having a good time. Her husband, Jacob, has ripped their family away from California to misguidedly start a farm far away from any hospital that they can take their chronically ill child for care. The endeavor has put unbelievable stress on the couple, both emotionally and financially. In addition to all of this, her mother has just suffered a debilitating stroke. As the film reaches its climax, she's ready for this whole experiment on her husband's part to fail and to graciously accept him back. Then...something happens. Jacob's farm proves to be a success. And even more than that, her son has started recovering all on his own. This should be a happy day, right?

What leading actress, Han Ye-ri, does next is some of the finest acting I have ever seen. You watch her just go numb. She's mortified. And you can read why all over her face. Her husband did the wrong thing at every turn, endangering and injuring the entire family, and yet he's been rewarded. She's sick at the injustice of it all. It's brilliant, subtle acting. In the next scene, she gets to be more overt in her performance, having a heartbreaking argument with her husband that pulls more wonderful acting out of her and her co-star, Steven Yeun. All around, she's just doing excellent work in her US debut. I'm a little miffed that she didn't get a nomination for Best Actress (Nor did Jessie Buckley for I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which was the best performance from any actor last year. But Frances McDormand for Nomadland sure did get in. Circle back to my review of that to guess how I feel about that.). I felt compelled to draw so much attention to that small moment just because it seems as though her performance as Monica has been overlooked this awards season.

That same subtlety I was drawn to in Han Ye-ri's performance is largely what I really liked about this movie. Every obvious choice I think is coming is eschewed for a more interesting, smaller choice. When you're presented with a period piece about Korean immigrants moving to rural America, you expect a big moment of overt racism at some point. Some slack-jawed farmer yelling for them to "Go back to 'Nam!" or some such ignorance. But nothing that big ever happens. The racial divide instead plays out through feelings of social isolation felt by the family and a couple of offensive, but not meant to be hateful, comments made by school children upon meeting Asian people for the first time.

The patch of land where the grandmother is planting the titular minari is telegraphed for catastrophe throughout the film's first act. It has poisonous snakes around it and is very explicitly far away from the house. The entire time, as Soon-ja and her grandson David bond there, you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead though, it serves as a powerful final image for the film. The minari blooms and shows that a Korean plant can grow strong in dangerous conditions far from home. Both of these choices to ignore the obvious just make for wonderful storytelling.

Watch the movie.