FOREIGN FILM: Minari

Sep 22-25, 2022
Told with the rugged tenderness of a Flannery O’Connor novel but aptly named for a resilient Korean herb that can grow wherever it is planted, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari is a raw and vivid story of two simultaneous assimilations; it is the story of a family assimilating into a country but also the story of a man assimilating into his family. Gentle as the stream that flows through the Yi’s property, and yet powerful enough to reverberate for generations to come, Chung’s loving — and immensely lovable — immigrant drama interrogates the American Dream with the hard-edged hope of a family that needs to believe in something before they lose all faith in each other. Tracking its Korean-American heroes as they relocate from California to Arkansas in order to start over, Minari works quietly and methodically, embracing its lush rural setting with striking glimpses of its characters alone against vast and empty landscapes.