The Atlantic
Lee Isaac Chung’s
David Bornfriend / A24
Having moved from the teeming cityscape of Taipei to the rural American South in the 1970s as a preteen, I know something of the shock, at once awe-inspiring and estranging, of that first sight of the great American landscape just sheer land that seems to stretch on forever. Watching
Minari, the new semi-autobiographical film from Lee Isaac Chung about a Korean-American family newly arrived in the heartlands of 1980s Arkansas, I remember again that uncanny sense of feeling at once free and lost.
From the get-go, there are hints of how tenuous this new beginning is for the Yi family. The father, Jacob Yi (played by Steven Yeun), has moved his entire family, in spite of his wife’s doubts and objections, across the country from California in order to chase his hopes of building a family farm. (“Five acres is a hobby … but my dream is 50 acres.”) But fragility touches every early frame from the awaiting trailer house