Minari / 2020 / Directed by Lee Isaac Chung
The Yi family have moved to rural Arkansas. The father, Jacob, is delighted with their mobile home and plot of land. His wife Monica: not so much. Their son David and their daughter Anne accept the situation and make themselves at home. The couple are both ‘chicken sexers’: workers who divide the female chicks (off to careers of egg-laying) from the male chicks (off to be incinerated).
Jacob buys an old tractor from a local character called Paul. Paul is introduced as what I believe Americans call a ‘hick’, and more specifically as the nutty-Christian variant of that stereotype. I don’t know how this would go down in the states, but both times I’ve seen it here this scene stimulated hearty laughs in the audience. Paul is unkempt, rustic to the point of disrepair. His unhinged and invasive religiosity has him speaking in tongues, claiming that God has brought him and the Yi family together for some purpose, and awkwardly hugging the resistant (and clearly agnostic or atheist) Jacob. He over shares, telling Jacob that he fought in Korea (‘It was a hard time’), and comes across as desperate for both company and employment.
As Monica’s unhappiness increases, Jacob, as a concession, suggests they go to church (she is a Christian). However, despite the congregants’ attempts to welcome them into the fold, Monica’s fear of being judged, her distaste for the rural community, and her lack of confidence in English prevent her from feeling at home in the their midst. The children, despite the ignorant (but not especially malicious) racism of their peers, both make friends.
Driving home from church one Sunday, the family sees Paul the nutty-Christian dragging a giant cross along the dusty road. Jacob (who hired Paul despite his weirdness) slows the car and asks the bedraggled man if he needs a lift. Paul replies that this is his church, and that he’ll see Jacob at work on Monday. Perhaps measured and urbane Christians will allow themselves a titter here too: Paul is so intent on taking the bible literally that he has taken up a literal cross! Monica is mortified, and finds the whole scene embarrassing. Teasing her as they drive off, Jacob says ‘Well, you like Jesus too!’
In another attempt to deal with Monica’s unhappiness, the family bring her mother Soonja from Korea to live with them. Soonja (delightfully played by legendary Korean actress Yuh-Jung Youn) is foul-mouthed, an inveterate gambler and a lover of wrestling. Little David, who must share a room with her, feels that she is too strange and too Korean by half. His attempts to rebel against her presence in his family’s nascent American idyll make up Minari’s most memorable storyline. Among other things, David tricks her into drinking his urine (he tells her it’s Mountain Dew) and unfavourably contrasts her grandmotherliness to the American ideal: ‘They bake cookies, they say nice things, they don’t swear, they don’t wear men’s underwear!’
However, as the film progresses, Soonja starts to play a different role in David’s life. The young boy has a heart condition that means his parents are always telling him not to run or exert himself. His heart could ‘stop at any moment’ as his mother is keen to remind him. His sister wants him out of her room like a normal big sister, but also takes on the burden of worrying about his heart from her mum. Meanwhile, David’s dad Jacob wants to teach him to be a good Korean man: i.e. useful (he uses the fate of male chicks with their bad meat and lack of ovulation as a cautionary tale). Despite his hostility to her, it is David’s grandmother who warms to the task of tending to the rest of his humanity. Soonja seems to believe that there is far more to life than simply remaining alive. She takes him on rambles through the woods. She even tries to get him to run (but he wants to go slowly so they go slowly). He plays in the stream while she plants the Minari seeds she brought with her from Korea. (Minari is some kind of salad or vegetable that grows like a weed in the right conditions.) You see them going to this little bend in the stream several times to check on the Minari. They confront a snake there (Soonja tells him it is better to not chase it away and keep it out in the where one can keep track of it). The site develops significance for them both. Soonja sings to the Minari in English: ‘Minari, minari, wonderful, wonderful.’
Monica’s faith has a slightly anxious quality. She is keen that David should pray for heaven. She talks about little boys who pray and then who wake up in heaven. David on some level knows that she is doing this because she is afraid of his death, and so, naturally, prayer becomes terrifying for him. Praying ‘to see heaven in his sleep’ is like asking for death. Soonja stops her daughter praying with David, describing it as nonsense and shooing her away. When David is frightened and opens up to her about his fears (‘I don’t want to go to heaven!’), she takes him into her bed, cradling him in her arms. She tells him he does not have to pray or to see heaven in his sleep. Instead, she gently rocks him, singing their Minari song, ‘Minari, minari, wonderful, wonderful’.
Luke 17:20-21 When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God will not come with observable signs. Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
When Jesus preaches about heaven, he is keen to emphasise its immanence. The immanence of heaven is what makes the doctrine a radical, world-shaking doctrine, and not a mere psychological trick to escape the fear of death. The heaven preached by Jesus is not just the ‘not here’ / ‘Other Place’ symbolised so effectively by the sky, but also a very real political entity, membership of which transforms our interaction with our contemporary context. Heaven is the negative of a worldly political institution: a not-bank where we ‘store up treasures’ (Matthew 6.20); heaven is the light within us, that potential that we are invited to share with Christ to make a kingdom where ‘righteousness and peace kiss each other’ (Ps 85:10). Heaven is what we witness in the present world when we join Jesus in his ministry of healing.
Soonja’s critique of Monica’s prayer is not a critique of the faith: it is the faith’s critique of the false heaven. Her minari song is a worship song that invites David through the gate. It is minari’s immanence that makes it an effective sign of heaven. The film contrasts this symbol to the delusion that we can ensure our eternal future simply by saying the right words. The contrast reminds me of the one between the true gospel and the Roman propaganda after which it was named. Rome says: ‘Work for citizenship and earn these benefits!’ God says: ‘Just remember, I’ve already given you heaven as a gift.’
The storyline with Paul develops as the film goes on. We see him helping plant and tend for the Korean vegetables with which Jacob hopes to found a successful farming business. When the water runs out (Jacob had earlier refused the services of a water diviner, preferring his powers of reason—which indeed initially lead to a successful well, but one that then runs dry mid-season) Paul is there to help with the crisis. Him and Jacob are friends, despite their differences. Paul is emotionally encouraging. He prays over Jacob and the vegetables. At one point, having shared a moment of solid farming camaraderie they look up from their labours and see the sun coming through the clouds. The expressions of the two actors, without much fanfare or fuss, communicate their relationship to the divine. Will Patton portrays reverence as an acknowledgement of the presence of God, Steven Yeun a dude looking up at a pretty sky for a second. To Jacob the earth is subjectively beautiful perhaps, but fundamentally it is the arena in which he can prove himself. The earth is the crude matter which he labours to transform. If he’s successful, then he can be a useful Korean man and a successful American one to boot and the world will be good. If he can’t, then it is not worth living in. He celebrates creation only when it plays ball with the project of his masculinities. Paul, on the other hand, is humble and is only shown caring for the Yi family and never for himself. In his eyes, the cosmos can speak. Nature is alive with God’s sublime Word. The beings of nature have infinite value because they are loved by God. Creation is the meadow in which God has given us life, it is the place where God is praised, and it is the place where God is speaking. The beauty of the earth is not subjective.
Paul is a pariah, the locals finding his rustic life a bit too backwoods, even for country folk like them. And yet, he is drawn deeper into the Yi household. Soonja has a stroke, and her eyes become fixed on a certain spot in her and David’s room. The sense of some kind of malevolent presence is not helped by the knowledge that the previous occupant of the house committed suicide (he was, it is rumoured, an unsuccessful farmer). Long story short, Monica asks Paul round in order to investigate and perhaps deal with what she suspects is a spirit. They have a convivial meal, where Paul’s love for Korean food is revealed, and afterwards, much to Jacob’s ire, Monica leads Paul through to Soonja’s room. The camera hugs Paul very close as he conducts his exorcism. The cinematic eye’s more unhinged movement and intimate proximity kept the audience’s previous laughter at Paul’s brand of Christianity at bay. Instead, the film successfully manoeuvred the cinema I was in into the suspenseful mood of the horror genre. I should say that, as a Christian, I thought that Will Patton’s body language and intonation was spot on. From the get-go I was believing in his faith as a live physical reality. Paul is the same throughout: no more or less clownish at the end than he is in his first scene, and yet the way his faith is framed and appreciated by the film has transformed our relationship to him. He starts as a figure of laughter and ends up as something else entirely.
The final act of the film leaves Paul and focuses on the core nuclear family as they drive to the city for the duel purposes of finding a shop to sell Jacob’s Korean vegetables and taking David to the doctor.
There is much tension between the couple, and as they wait for the doctor’s verdict on David they start arguing. The quarrel opens with the memory that they had agreed to move to the states in order to save each other. And yet despite this grand aim they are clearly miserable. Monica wants them to sell up and move back to California. Jacob is horrified by the idea that he might sex chickens all his life and wants the kids to see him succeed for once. ‘At what cost?’ is Monica’s question. Exasperated, Jacob tells her to leave and take the kids if she wants, but he has to stay and do the farm.
The argument stops when the doctor calls them into his office. It’s a miracle: the hole in David’s heart is getting smaller. He will not need surgery. Following this, the family get more good news as a shopkeeper agrees to buy Jacob’s vegetables.
However, Monica is still distraught that Jacob chose the farm over her and the kids. He is of the opinion that that doesn’t matter now, since they’ve made the deal and everything will soon be fine. Monica response is to ask: ‘And so we can’t save each other, but money can?’ Jacob searches for words that can make everything better, but can’t find them. The end of the relationship seems to loom over them. They drive home in silence (ignoring, by the way, little David sharing the news that he finally prayed to see heaven, and indeed he did see it).
Meanwhile, back at home, a Soonja disabled by the stroke is determined to do some domestic chores. She is putting together some waste from the harvest to burn. The fire gets out of control and spreads to the barn where all the vegetables are stored. There is nothing she can do, and she wanders off into the darkness in a state of catatonic confusion and despair. When the Yi family get home, Monica and Jacob go into the burning barn and try and save the boxes of vegetables. They are coughing from the smoke and will surely die in there. It is Jacob, loosing Monica in the flames, who comes to his senses first. Locking hands they manage to get out of the barn alive. Clutching onto each other, they watch Jacob’s ambitions turning to smoke and ash.
‘Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.’ James 4:9-10
God has destroyed the morsel of success coming Jacob’s way, and sent him flying back into the arms of his wife. Like so many Christians I sometimes struggle to welcome that aspect of our theology that looks to suffering and loss as teachers of the Way. But how else could God have ever begun to chip away at my arrogance and ignorance? How else could he bring me towards myself? How else could he free me from my anxious worship of idols? Monica and Jacob clutch onto one another, reduced to a child-like vulnerability, lit by the flames of Jacob’s dream burning to the ground. (The image somehow reminds me of Gideon’s dad being totally fine about his son burning down his altar to Baal in Judges 6.)
Meanwhile, David and Anne are looking for their grandma, and once they see her David does his first real run to catch up to her. She looks destroyed, not herself. She seems miles away. However, she recognises her young grandchildren just enough listen. She stops, and allows them to turn her around, lead her away from the darkness and back toward home.
And what is that home? It is not a successful farm. It is not an ideal American family. It is not an ideal Korean family. It is not the place where Jacob and Monica saved one another through marriage and emigration.
The last scene shows Jacob and David at the stream, harvesting the Minari. It is their sole remaining crop: the one last thing they have to sustain them. (Exodus 16).
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