Minari, and the importance of being seen

As soon as I saw the trailer to Minari (2020), I knew it would break me. Lee Isaac Chung chose to tell a deeply personal story—one that came from a pieced-together memory of witnessing his family uproot themselves from their home country to try to build a new dream in a country that only gives them obstacles.

Korean culture is seeing an unprecedented global renaissance, but Korean-Americans still fall through a crack of obscurity. (For more on Korean culture, see "Kpop, and the need for optimism".) We're not Korean enough to feel truly represented by the infiltration of Korean culture into the mainstream, nor do we often see ourselves in the larger Asian-American dialogue. To be fair, it still remains a small stage.

Enter Minari. It's the first time a distinctly Korean-American story has garnered critical and national attention.

(It's also widely available for streaming now. Run, don't walk.)

I won't write any spoilers because the distribution for the film thus far has been limited, and I selfishly really want everyone to watch this movie.

Minari follows the Yi family as they move from California to Arkansas so Jacob (Steven Yeun) can chase his dream of building a farm. It becomes quickly evident that this was never properly revealed to his wife, Monica (Han Ye-Ri) who becomes increasingly more reticent to the new life she feels her family has been forced into. As a peace offering, Jacob invites Monica's mother (Youn Yuh-jung) to come stay with them from Korea. Meanwhile, their children, David (Alan Kim) and Anne (Noel Kate Cho), also struggle with their new family dynamic and to assimilate with their white neighbors.

While the Yi's are lucky enough to not be the target of any outwardly antagonistic forms of racism, the movie still positions them as different from the people around them. The children at church are quick to point this out to David and Anne all-too-familiar and problematic ways. Interestingly enough, it is in church, a purported place of belonging, that the family encounters really the only form of overt racism in the film.

Although the racism seems mild, the film shows a form of racism that everyone claims nobody should get up in arms about. Because what harm is there in pointing out that you are different from everyone else around you? And what harm is there in insinuating that you are other, or foreign, or different in the country you call your home?

But the central conflict of the film is not the Yi's rising up against the odds of racism. At its core, Minari is a story about family.

It's what gives it such a familiar feel. Unlike other films that center around the celebration of East Asian cultures like Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Minari is decidedly narrow in its focus. And unlike many other films I've seen, Minari isn't a spectacle. Every detail is presented like it would be in a nature documentary—unbiased, without context, and as if the audience was simply sitting outside a window, peering into the family's home.

I saw my family in the way American foods like Mountain Dew and cereal integrated seamlessly with spreads of Korean meals on the table. I saw my childhood when, as soon as their parents begin to fight, the children run into a separate room to draw pictures on paper, begging them to stop. Everything, from the punishments to the medicinal smell your grandparents really do have to curling up on your mom's lap after a shower so she could pick out earwax, sat in my soul and validated my experience.

Even the fractured relationship between Jacob and Monica, where so little was stated and so much was merely accepted as necessary suffering, projected my parent's faces onto the screen. I saw a family that lived without boundaries and with the acceptance that one member's burden is another's burden to bear—a stark contrast to the typical expectations of American families.

Here was a film that not only saw me, but gave others the opportunity to see me too. This, too, is my childhood. This, too, is my family.

Now, there was a film that people could watch and maybe understand a little bit more of the rituals and dynamics that shaped me.

Which is why the disqualification of Minari as a Best Picture contender at the Golden Globes hurts so badly.* Our story—the story of a household that uses English to spackle the gaps of conversation to bridge together understanding not only from old country to new, but from immigrant parent to American child—doesn't qualify as an American story. Our story is still, at best, a foreign one.

What we are being told is that our stories are not American. Even though the filmmaker was born in Denver, Colorado, even though the film is set in the United States, even though the lead actor is from Michigan, the film is not American.

America has othered our story. And as long as our story continues to be othered, where do we find our voice in a society that refuses to acknowledge the sacrifice, the pain, and the hope that immigrant families bring with them past the US borders? Where do we go when we are both rejected by our ancestral countries for being too American and then rejected by our home country for not being American enough?

Where do we belong when our story feels so distinctly American but to a white America feels, at best, foreign?

Minari doesn't seek to answer those questions. And it shouldn't have to bear the burden of being an example to those questions.

Minari's buzz, though, feels well-deserved. It is a beautiful slice-of-life film that connects the specificity of its detail to the universality in its themes. The end of the film leaves you feeling uncertain and unsettled—the same way much of an immigrant's life does in this turbulent country.

My single complaint is that the film didn't have quite the amount of emotional resonance I both expected and craved. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I believe some of it had to do with the way film was shot. It felt removed and detached from its characters, even the ones it takes the time to develop and display. It's no fault of the actors—the two Korean women especially do a lot of heavy lifting and are sublime in each of their roles. It may have much to do with the same feeling I described before, like the audience is outside, peering in through a window rather than sitting on the floor of the Yi's living room with them.

Even still, filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung gave us something that feels so singular and wonderful that I only hope it thrusts more stories of its kind to the limelight. Asian-American stories have yet to find their time, and his film, along with others that have also come forth in the past few years like Lulu Wang's The Farewell (2019), are uniquely stirring to other second-generation Asian-Americans whose experience of having one foot in one identity and the other foot in another are rarely given a stage in the national conversation.

Minari is proof that it's time we let them.

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*And, ok, I get that this wasn't so much because the powers that be decided that Minari wasn't American enough, but moreso due to antiquated rules that state a movie must have more than 50% of its dialogue in English to qualify as a Best Picture contender, but why is this still a thing? This is a country built on the backs of people who come across its borders in search of a better life for themselves and their children. This is a country filled with people from different backgrounds, different languages, and different cultures.

It's time we celebrate these differences, not condemn them to an othered, foreign status, not fit enough to be considered part of the American story. Because they are. Because we are.

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Did I mention that this beautiful film is available for streaming ?! Pay the nominal fee or however much it is to watch. If you don't like it, boba's on me.