Minari goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language. It’s a language of the heart...
FOR THE SECOND YEAR RUNNING A KOREAN MOVIE IS TIPPED FOR OSCAR GLORY. LAURA HARDING TALKS TO ITS STAR STEVEN YEUN AND DIRECTOR LEE ISAAC CHUNG
Coming from an Asian-American actor’s perspective, that is one of the first scripts that I’ve read about an experience that I can relate to that didn’t explain itself... it was just confident in its own point of view Steven Yeun, left
THE Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun has made a string of interesting and unexpected choices since he left the show that made him a star.
The Korean-born actor exited the hit horror drama in 2016 after six series in the role of Glenn Rhee.
Since then he has appeared in the Netflix action adventure Okja, the searing satire Sorry To Bother You, and the critically acclaimed Korean drama Burning. But none have felt quite so personal and resonant as his latest film, Minari.
It’s a touching and poignant family drama based on writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s childhood, which has been nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, best actor for Steven and best director for Lee, as well as six Baftas.
“This film has been a ride and a journey,” says 37-year-old Steven.
“It dictates its own terms and it’s felt like that since the beginning, so it’s been really cool to see everybody be seen.”
Told in Korean and English and set in the 1980s, the film is inspired by Lee’s parents’ move from South Korea to America, and follows the Yi family as they try to build a life for themselves on a farm in Arkansas.
“I think when I first read it, it was the simplicity of how honest it was and how truthful it felt,” Steven reflects. “I didn’t live Isaac’s life but when I read it I was like ‘Wow, I relate to this so much.’
“I think also coming from an Asian-American actor’s perspective, that is one of the first scripts that I’ve read about an experience that I can relate to that didn’t explain itself... it was just confident in its own point of view and that is deeply something that I really wanted to say.”
Asian-American leading men in Hollywood are still very few and far between, but Steven tries not to let the pressure of representation play on his mind too much.
“I’ve done plenty of things I don’t want to do and whenever I do those things I’ve felt the dissonance of feeling, like maybe I shouldn’t have done this and I’m not having a good time.
“I’ve just been trying to be honest with myself. I’m so many things, as we all are. So the representation is something that I’m aware of but it’s not something that I hold as a part of the way that I make decisions.
“I speak from my own point of view and humanity. So I’ve just been trying to be me as much as I can.”
The film is Chung’s fifth, but the first time he has told a personal story, seen through the eyes of Steven’s character Jacob’s young son David (played by eight-year-old Alan Kim, who is also nominated for a Bafta).
“It felt timely when I wrote it because I was about to move to Korea,” he recalls,” and I remembered back to when my dad was my age, he moved us to that farm in Arkansas and my daughter was the age that I was when we moved to that farm.
“It felt like we had reached this point where I was taking the same journey. Well, not exactly the same, but there was something similar going on, of trying to start something new.
“That felt like a good vehicle for the story to really mine that time in my life and to figure out more about my own dad and think a lot more about the perspective that my daughter has on life now.
“I decided to let the story really contain a lot of the stuff that I was feeling myself as a father and as a husband, so it just became a very deeply personal film, probably the most personal I’ve been with anything that I’ve made, and it just felt like it was the right time to do that.”
While Chung’s is an American story, perhaps the most American it is possible to be – that of the pursuit of the American Dream – it hasn’t always been treated as such.
When Minari competed at the Golden Globes, it was only eligible in one category – foreign language film. It won the prize, and in Chung’s acceptance speech, which went viral because of the presence of his adorable young daughter, he made the pointed remark that it goes “deeper than any language”.
He said: “Minari is about a family. It’s a family trying to learn to speak a language of its own. It goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language. It’s a language of the heart, and
I’m trying to learn it myself to pass it on, and I hope we’ll all learn how to speak this language of love to each other, especially this year.”
Looking back on the night of the awards show now, he is frank.
“I can’t help but contain some of the sorrow and disappointment that many Asian Americans naturally feel in situations like this, especially at a time where we are having an increase in hate crimes and discrimination happening against Asians right now.
“I have a fatigue about that to be honest and I was trying to figure out how to speak to that, and at the same time not to say that ‘Hey, I deserve to be awarded best picture.’
“That is not what I wanted that moment to be about, I wanted to speak to what is my actual hope.
“Two hours before we went on my daughter told me she wanted to sit by me and I had no idea she was going to do that.
“I thought ‘OK, if I win this thing there is a lot of pressure to say something about all this stuff, but I also have my daughter next to me and I want to say something that is really for her as well.’
“That is why I rewrote what I might say and I will be honest, there was a part of me that was kind of hoping something else would win because I was a nervous wreck, but the fact it all came together like that, without me predicting it, it’s just another part of this film.
“I am grateful that at that very moment I was able to express something that I feel speaks to an idea that transcends the Golden Globes and that category. Really it’s about love and that transcends all those things and I hope we all learn that.”
■ Minari is available on demand now, in drive-in cinemas from April 12 and cinemas from May 17