★★★★★ (out of five stars) Cress (Minari) is an East Asian herb that grows in the wild and is prized by connoisseurs, somewhat like the British Salicornia. It is a sign of mystery and celestial fate in this film, heralding good things from the soil. It's a riveting, moving family drama with a touch of sun-kissed sentimentality. Writer-director Lee Isaac Cheng is based on his childhood on an Arkansas farm in the 1980s. On the surface, Minari looks like a beloved classic, and every scene in it feels familiar and loved, and it relives childhood in a magical way. Watching this film, for the first time in decades, I recalled as a child sitting in the back seat of a steaming, parked car waiting for Mom and Dad in those days without air conditioning, with the sun shining down, maybe There was a gust of wind blowing through the open windows, and the warm plastic seats were pressed against bare legs. Steven Yeon witty plays Jacob, a South Korean immigrant who came to the United States during the Reagan era; he and his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) and their two children, eldest daughter Anne and younger son David, California came to Arkansas after Jacob had been earning unfun but dependable factory wages in a California chicken hatchery. Jacob had a big dream: He would cultivate the land here and become rich by growing real Korean vegetables for the many Korean immigrants in the United States who crave a taste of home. But Monica was already disappointed in this new, hard life he gave them. Han Yi-ri did a great job, proud and independent like an exiled princess. She persuades Jacob to let her mother from Korea come and live with them, ostensibly to help with the children, but also because Monica needs a real grown-up friend. Yoon Yoo-jung excels as a complaining, outspoken "grandmother" who brings material pleasures including cress seeds, while Monica's emotions are almost unbearable when she sees her mother for the first time in years. endure. Jacob the Devout Christian Paul (Will Patton As he continues the difficult sowing and reaping with the help of David), he has to ignore the differences in his marriage and the health of young David. Inevitably, Jacob's crops begin to fail, and we see him just like his children: hard work, repressed panic about money. Poor, nervous Jacob reaches a certain status, like the father in "Cottage on the Prairie," or Gérard Depardieu in "Love in the Mountain," longing for the rain to save his crops. It's heart-wrenching to watch him nearly paralyzed from work and then argue with Monica; to watch the kids rush into their rooms and write "don't fight" on paper planes and then desperately throw them into their parents The room for scolding is heartbreaking. Rightly or wrongly, you're expecting a racist remark in this type of film. When does it appear? In a bank, with a white manager? In church, with white priests? In the hospital, with white doctors? But it never happened, or at least only one bad thing a white kid said to David at a fraternity. (The importance of Christianity in Korean life is another under-discussed film theme.) Even so, the kid and David quickly became friends. This isn't a movie about racial tensions: it's as if the family is so isolated that the whole issue doesn't matter. The most important thing is the family, and its struggle with the weather and fate. The details in this film, the clips from the child's perspective, the disaster, the touching in tender memory, chorus like a choir.
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