“Wonderful, wonderful minari”: Family is forever ★★★★☆

The highly-anticipated 2021 Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) opened its online doors on the 24th of February with the screening of Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical drama Minari (2020), which was produced by A24 and Plan B Entertainment. Minari perfectly fits into A24’s collection of critically-acclaimed independent films and was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the distinguished 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Minari tells the story of Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han), who emigrated from South Korea to California; their children, Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim), who were later born in the United States; and their grandmother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), who moves from Korea to care for the children. The family moves to an isolated farm in Arkansas, following Jacob’s dream of successfully farming Korean produce, and struggles with their new socioeconomic status, the cultural divide between them and the rest of the town, the dangers of overworking and its consequences on their relationships with each other.

Minari’s characters are complex, denoting Chung’s talent for realistic storytelling and autobiographical character building. The relationships between his characters are never black and white, reinforcing one of the film’s core messages, which spells out how every single person is three-dimensional and intricate in their own way. For instance, Soon-ja and David’s relationship is a tumultuous one at first, with David outwardly rejecting her as an authority figure (and once even tricking her into drinking urine), but both characters’ underlying health conditions and childish playfulness make them inseparable in the end. However, the more Anne and David bond with their grandmother, the more fissures we begin to see in Jacob and Monica’s marriage, even though we are regaled with a few moments of deep love and intimacy. Minari’s characters present themselves differently throughout the film but ultimately allows for every character to be understood and developed. Therefore, Minari excels at allowing the audience to glimpse through the layers of each character’s actions, promoting an unbiased, empathetic and psychologically nuanced nderstanding of the characters, which is slowly developed throughout the film and is finally realised in its climax.

The cinematographic style of Minari is heavily influenced by a Terrence Malick-like usage of lingering shots of natural landscapes of the family’s property, or Jacob’s own ‘Garden of Eden’. This abundance of nature shots resembles the importance of nature in this story since the family’s wellbeing and economic status quite literally depend on the crops hailing from their garden. Jacob is seen many times smoking alone in the Garden of Eden, wholly engrossed in his farming attempts, and these shots paired with a soundscape filled with cicadas, running water and a melodic, instrumental soundtrack by Emile Mosseri perfectly encapsulate the breathtaking natural beauty of the filming location and the delicate layers of complexity within these characters - and thereby, within the film itself. Although these shots decelerate the overall pacing of the film, they provide aesthetically-pleasing breaks in the tension and give the audience a slight glimpse into Jacob’s worried mind, illustrating Chung’s -and cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s- talent for shot composition, style and staging. Thus, Minari sets its own pace and tells its own story softly, enlisting the audience to develop its intricate characters but still managing to frame every single one from an empathetic perspective, perhaps as a reminder that familial relationships are always delicate but time, love and kindness can heal any cracks in them. Minari also offers a unique insight into a classic immigration story, by illustrating the importance of community and family and depicting the invisible cultural and social barriers that can keep people apart. The film reminds us that cultural roots can never be totally erased and should be celebrated instead. Chung’s “wonderful, wonderful minari” pays a Malick-inspired homage to the natural landscapes of rural Arkansas, as a heartwarming love letter to his childhood, his family and his dad’s own Garden of Eden, reminding us that everything will be okay in the end and establishing this film as an instant ‘magnum opus’ in the genre of independent dramas.