May 11, 2023
The sun's heat imposes upon Minari's Arkansas — one can't help but look away from the radiance. The Yi family gazes out upon the fields. With shielded eyes, they look to make this place their home.
Lachlan Milne's camera — Lee Isaac Chung's eyes & memories — paints the vivid rural landscapes of white Arkansas in a strange light, as if an alien planet. Minari is focused on the aforementioned Yi family, a semi-autobiographical illustration of a Korean-American family who move from the relative urban safety of California to white, rural Arkansas. They wish to start anew, to make a better life for themselves, but are pinned between the foreign culture of Arkansas and the memories of their previous lives. They arrive at Arkansas as prospectors, but quickly realize that home isn’t simply contained in a household.
Minari is reserved but sprawling, shy but ambitious, warm but unfamiliar; contradictions that define the condition of Asian American-ness.
In their quest to find home, the Yi family comes across figures from many different walks of life, in the foreign landscape of Arkansas. The family learns to understand and communicate with these characters despite the immense cultural gulf between them. Paul is a religious fanatic with many strange tendencies, but is kind and proves to be one of the most tolerant, despite his offputting appearances. A young girl at church innocently lists off stereotypical syllables off in a racist faux-asian language, but the older sister in the Yi family, Anne, just plays along, pointing out words which are actually Korean. When we first meet a person from Korea living in Arkansas, it’s Ms. Oh from the hatchery the parents work at — she comments “The Koreans around here, we left the cities on purpose — to escape Korean church.”
When we meet new characters, characters outside of the Yi household, we don't see their faces, at least initially. The camera focuses below their neck. Their faces are cut off from our view. We hear their voices, disconnected, thick Southern accents, imposing upon the0 familiarity of the Yi's speaking Korean and their Korean accents. Even to a native English speaker, one feels off-put by the American characters — the cinematic language of the film instills a trance occupying the space of the immigrant family.
Minari is a deeply personal depiction of estrangement and alienation in one's new home, but through the tonal strength of the work, the experience of the film itself no longer is exclusive to Lee Isaac Chung, nor the Asian American condition, rather, its story of resilience and adaptation is universal; and that is the strength of Minari.