Minari, review: a gentle restoration of faith in the American Dream

• Dir: Lee Isaac Chung. Cast: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Alan Kim, Noel Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Darryl Cox. No cert, 115 mins

As well as being the title of Lee Isaac Chung’s new film, Minari - for which Youn Yuh-jung won supporting actress Oscar and Bafta awards - is the Korean name for a peppery, watercress-like vegetable that can play an invaluable role in any number of dishes, and can thrive in even the soggiest, least promising ground. As a metaphor for the immigrant experience, it’s both picturesque and sturdily no-nonsense, which is also a neat summing-up of Chung’s breakthrough feature overall. 

Though Minari will be made available to cinemas when they reopen next month, its status as a major contender in the current awards season make a lockdown release a no-brainer. So here it is, available to rent and stream at home one week before the Baftas, at which it’s in the running for six prizes – then another six at the Oscars, two weeks after that. Fortunately, it’s performed and crafted with a tenderness that lends itself to small-screen viewing – it’s the kind of film that’s attuned to the small, here-and-now details of its characters’ lives, from the stickiness of old wooden drawers to the wisps of steam that rise from freshly ploughed ground.

Heavily inspired by its director’s own upbringing in rural Arkansas in the 1980s, it follows a Korean family who are putting down roots into what father Jacob (Steven Yeun) hopefully describes as “the best dirt in America”: a five-acre plot of Ozark grassland which he hopes to develop into a farm 10 times that size. Jacob’s wife Monica (Yeri Han) is less optimistic, and her fears are hardly allayed when she sets eyes on their new house, which resembles a large Kit-Kat finger on wheels, held in place by breeze blocks.

“Don’t be like that,” her husband says reassuringly, before hoisting her up and across the chest-height threshold. After all, the couple and their preposterously angelic offspring, seven-year-old David (Alan Kim) and his older sister Anne (Noel Cho), have much to be getting on with. There’s a well to dig, a field to till and plant, locals to befriend, plus a spare room to make up for Monica’s elderly mother Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung), a tough old bird who’s flying in from Korea to – theoretically – help out.

Minari is a multi-generational affair, but Chung keeps it earthed to young David’s perspective, with most scenes bathed in the kind of crisp, honeyed light in which our vivid childhood memories so often seem to unfold. Both David and Anne are keenly aware – at least in a broad, innocent sense – of the pressure this make-or-break project is putting on their parents’ marriage, and during a night-time argument the pair make paper aeroplanes with “don’t fight” scrawled in crayon on their flanks, then send them gliding into the living room. 

Small, seemingly formative experiences feel just right – such as the moment during a walk in the woods when David spots a snake and tries to shoo it away, before his grandmother warns him that hidden dangers pose a far greater threat than the ones slithering past in plain sight. David himself has a heart murmur, which is a further source of anxiety for his parents, and also one of perhaps a smidge too many symbolically loaded subplots that the ostensibly low-key narrative keeps diligently spinning away.