MINARI (2021)

(In cinemas – check your local movie guide.)
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A Korean-American family moves to Arkansas in search of their own American Dream. With the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung), the stability of their relationships is challenged even more in this new life in the rugged Ozarks, testing the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.
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A gentle, subtle, charming, and sometimes very moving immigration story based on the writer/director, Lee Isaac Chung’s, own family experience when he was a small boy and his family struggled to achieve the American Dream after migrating from Korea. The acting is excellent, the slow-paced story will, I assume, resonate with anyone who travels to a new country to begin a new life. The story is shot through with humour generated by the circumstances and the characters — there’s no attempt to be funny; some of the people and events are inherently funny. There’s pain and tragedy, too. The cinematography is beautiful, too. It’s a delightful story if a little too long and too slow. And the orderliness of the plot doesn’t really seem consistent with the messy chaos of the family and what it is going through. It’s all a bit too “tidy”. But MIRANI is worth seeing as a way to gain insight to what many families must experience who have to cope with what, to them, are strange people in a strange land.

(In cinemas – check your local movie guide.)