Minari is a 2020 film directed by Korean American film director Lee Isaac Chung and stars well known actors from South Korea and America: Steven Yeun, Han Ye Ri, and Youn Yuh Jung. The film scored big at this years Academy Awards, earning six nominations. Youn Yuh Jung also won for best supporting actress being the first Korean actress to do so. I honestly don't consider Minari a foreign film but the film still won best foreign film nether less. Minari tells the AMERICAN experience of a Korean family in the nineties. Speaking a foreign language in a film doesn't automatically make the film foreign.
A Korean family with two immigrant parents move from California to Arkansas during the nineties to start a new life. Farm life was never easy and gets harder when their grandmother comes to live with them.....
If I'm to be honest, I had a little bit of hight expectations for this film. Especially since I'm a fan of Yeun and Yuh Jung. Then as I kept watching the film, my thrill started to slowly die. This film is a very slow moving film about a Korean family who don't have much money. Yet, They still strive to make the best out of the lives they are given. The performances dig deep into this emotional showcase weaved between the bonds of family. I can acknowledge all of this to the point of appreciation and still this aspect wasn;t enough to kept me interested in the plot of Minari. The parents fight most of the film with the two children stuck in the middle. The grandmother comes to live with them when they barely could make ends meet by themselves. She then continues to do more harm than good. I guess the ending of the film was supposed to show a family's strong structure to stay together no matter what. Because lord knows a divorce seemed to be looming over the parents the ENTIRE FILM. Also, You mean to tell me that there was absolutely no black people in Arkansas during the nineties? I know this was based on Director Chung's life so maybe he just doesn't remember seeing black people working the farms..... Or maybe Brad Pitt didn't give the project enough money to hire black actors? Who knows at this point. What I do know is that this film will put you into a slumber after awhile. Too bad cause I really liked the overall concept but I'm not going to say I enjoy a film just because it's Asian. Same could be said about Black films as a black man.
Steven Yeun's performance was the worse I think I've seen him act. He plays a father well. He plays a husband well. His Korean even improved since I heard him speak in Burning until he tried mimic an old middle aged Korean man's accent when he speaks english. Everything went downhill from there. Yeun couldn't keep the accent while in character. His own American accent kept coming out when he would say certain English words causing me as the viewer to be taken out of the story. I found myself thinking that native Koreans would find his portrayal kind of funny. Probably awkward as well. Jung plays a role here where she's not a kooky mean old lady like in her other films. I'll call that award worthy. Every other character was either super wired or forgettable to me.
I'm learning to not let the words of others hype me up about films. Usually the artsy films that everyone loves to rave about end up being not too impressive in my eyes. Parasite had me feeling the same way Minari does. Both films did not live up to what I thought they would be.
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