The Rollberg chronicles: Minari. 7.5 on IMDB, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. 6 Oscar nominations and the great grandmother Youn Yuh-jung wins the Best Supporting Actress Award, surpassing Colman, Close, and Bakalova.
At its simplest, it felt like a well-formed melodrama of a migrant Korean family trying to make a good life for themselves in 1980s, Arkansas. The beauty of the film was probably in its modest details. The mundane chick sexing job, frustration about the trailer house (maybe marking the idea of groundlessness in popular culture, together with Nomadland), concerning heart problems of the little kid, idiosyncratic grandmother were the constituents that made the film unique.
Was the cross-carrying sidekick Paul a second-level metaphor of Jacob’s farming dream? By any means, the film challenged the question of the community for me, with the funny but requisite church scenes.
A dramatic fracture in the film was triggered by a fire. That reminded me of an old friend telling a story about the youthfulness that concluded with yet another fortuitous fire. It’s probably a common theme in literature and film. Steven Yeun knows it better, from the Burning, probably.