FAMILY & AMERICA
‘Minari’ tells of Koreans in U.S. South, but message is universal
“Minari” may focus on a Korean-American family in the U.S. South, but the movie’s themes are universal.
The film, made for a Hollywood studio and primarily spoken in Korean, explores how the American experience means something different to everyone, and how love and humanity help shape our lives.
“Ultimately, for me, this film is mostly about family, and mostly about the connections that we oftentimes don’t honor,” star Steven Yeun told the Daily News. “The ways in which we misunderstand each other. The ways in which our realities clash with each other, but ultimately, ways in which we might be able to see ourselves clearer so that we can reconnect and be there collectively.”
Set in the 1980s, the film introduces Yeun’s character, Jacob Yi, as an immigrant from South Korea who, after a few years in California, moves to the Arkansas countryside with his wife, Monica, and their two children to start a farm.
They’re later joined at their mobile home by Monica’s boisterous mother, Soonja, who moves from Korea and brings seeds to plant minari, a popular and hardy vegetable in Asia that grows in the wild.
The comedy-drama, which hits theaters Friday and video on demand Feb. 26, draws from the real-life experiences of writer-director Lee Isaac
Chung, who grew up on a farm in Lincoln, Ark.
“The project started off with a list of about 80 memories, and I used this to start to shape together a story,” Chung told The News. “The base of the film is definitely rooted in memory and in autobiography, but I tried then to take it completely away from that and to make a fictional story. There are elements of both bleeding into each other, where I can’t really tell you how much of it is real or fake, but all of it is very sincere.”
“Minari” was a massive hit at film festivals in 2020, following the success of another film, the Oscar-winning “Parasite,” predominantly spoken in Korean.
The widespread appeal
of “Minari” stems from its ability to connect with every viewer in some way, says actress Yeri Han, who plays Monica.
“Everyone has a childhood and their memory that they sometimes revisit, and I think that is contained in this film,” Han, 36, told The News. “Anyone can be Monica at times, be Jacob or Soonja at times, so that’s the reason, I guess, it resonates with people. There’s not a bad character in the film. Everybody is trying their best and trying to put forward their opinions.”
Like their director, the stars of “Minari” used inspiration from their own lives to embody their characters.
“I thought of maybe the entire generation of our fathers, of immigrants, of Korean-Americans, and then specifically portions of how I understood my father,” said Yeun, 37, who was born in Seoul and was previously seen fighting zombies in the TV series “The Walking Dead.”
“I think I brought in aspects of my own experience with fatherhood,” he continued. “But also Jacob, to me, really resonated from a really isolated place. I really felt like there’s so many people, independent of immigrant life or these specific Korean-American [characters], that spoke from a specific place.”
“Minari” was nominated this month for outstanding cast in a motion picture at the SAG Awards. Yeun also earned a nomination for best actor, while Yuh-Jung Youn, who plays Soonja, is up for best supporting actress.
The Golden Globes, meanwhile, disappointed the film’s supporters by not making “Minari” eligible in its best drama category because the movie is not primarily in English.
“It’s not up to me to have these rules or not, but I think there’s a lot of good dialogue about this issue now that people are having about whether or not this distinction of language is outdated,” Chung said.
“I think that’s a good discussion that we can be having.”
Youn, 73, believes audiences have been so moved by “Minari” because every viewer can get behind “the parents’ sacrifice for the second generation to have a better future.”
“Most of the immigrant stories are talking about discrimination, being not treated well or something, but this one doesn’t,” Youn told The News. “[It’s] just our family. [We] just stick together, try to survive, try to raise our own kids.”
Han, too, loves how the movie depicts both the struggles the family members go through and the beautiful moments they share.
“I think that’s life,” Han said. “I think that’s an aspect of life that anyone and everyone can relate to. This film doesn’t try to lie about it or fake it. I think that’s the virtue of this film.”