Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on various players
I’ve been mulling over what I want to say about Minari for a little more than a day. It’s not that I didn’t like it; as a matter of fact, I think it’s a lovely movie in many respects. It’s that I genuinely don’t know what I have to say about it. It doesn’t feel like a movie that generates a great deal of conversation in a lot of ways. There are plenty of places where it could generate conversation tuned in a different way, but it is the movie that it.
Minari is the story of the Yi family in the mid-1980s Jacob: (Steven Yeun), Monica (Han Ye-ri), and children Anne (Noel Kate Cho), and David (Alan Kim). David, we learn, has a heart problem, and his parents tell him constantly not to run. We also learn that Jacob and Monica are much happier speaking Korean while Anne and David speak Korean, but also speak English like American natives. The Yis have moved to Arkansas from California. In Arkansas, Monica is able to work as a chicken sexer (she wasn’t fast enough for California). Jacob does the same work, but is really there to start a farm. His goal is to grow Korean vegetables to feed the thousands of Koreans moving to the U.S.
