“Minari” mines family dynamics to mixed results
From 13A
There’s a haziness to the way the moments continue, charming in a way, but too indistinct to pack an emotional wallop. It’s only when Han Ye-Ri returns to the forefront that the film feels as complex. She’s bending the film to her will in extended glances asking questions that the rest of the film seems intent on avoiding. Any ambivalence is forgotten when she arrives on screen. As the matriarch of the family, her eyes engulf the screen, creating rich complications when she interacts with any character. It’s the kind of performance that harnesses the offhand distance of the aesthetics and pulls it into sharp focus. It’s ferocious work that benefits her scene partners. Each actor becomes better opposite her. Just consider an extended conversation between her and Steven Yeun, who plays Jacob, which is one of the film’s final scenes. The two actors exchange a look of such knowing sadness that I, momentarily, found myself more moved than I anticipated. The look of sadness felt specific to these people, this place, and this time, in a way that the film needed. But then comes a final deus-ex-machina, and with a time-jump as epilogue, “Minari” swerves us away from tougher complications, yet again.
It’s not really Chung’s fault that the film has been swept up in the groundswell of the sentiment that it is “the movie that we need right now.” Yet, I find myself unable to articulate or even understand just why that calling-card is the one being used for the film. The inherent American Dream earnestness that marks the events of the family’s journey, struggling to grow like the minari plant, might be ostensibly hopeful. But it feels impossible not to read the ambivalent reality of the world into Chung’s sanguine aesthetics. That sanguinity, and emotional reticence, mean we can spot ourselves in the haziness of its family encounters. Beneath the occasional haze, it is warm and earnest and sweet. But, too often, that ostensible warmth feels like it’s hiding something hotter, angrier, and more restless beneath it.
Minari will be available on VOD release from February 26.