Minari review, Culture Whisper
A small Korean boy walks through his father’s prospective farm in Arkansas, wearing cowboy boots. He drinks Mountain Dew, believing it’s actually sourced from American mountains. And he hates his grandmother, thinking she doesn’t fit at all with the American image of a grandma – especially as she doesn’t bake cookies. He thinks she smells like Korea, despite the fact he's never been there.
This is David Yi (Alan S Kim), the charming, bi-lingual son in Minari. This semi-autobiographical drama from Korean-American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung (Abigail Harm, Lucky Life) follows the Yi family as the father Jacob (an absorbing, repressed Steven Yeun) navigates his American Dream – leading them from California to a patch of potential farmland in the Ozarks.
But even with the sunlight pouring through tall branches and grazing the grass, the beauty of the place doesn't persuade the mother, Monica (an understandably sceptical Yeri Han). She's been doubtful for a long time, exacerbated as she sees that their new home is not what her husband promised. It's rectangular, mundane, and has wheels. 'It just gets worse and worse,' she says, after climbing through the front door.
