At The Movies: Minari a story about seeking a new life in a strange land

Minari is about a South Korean immigrant Jacob Yi who moves his family from California to a small farming community in Arkansas. PHOTO: ENCORE FILMS

Minari (PG)

115 minutes/opens March 11

4 stars

The story: Driven by the need to make his mark on the world, South Korean immigrant Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) moves his family - wife Monica (Han Ye-ri), daughter Anne (Noel Kate Cho), son David (Alan Kim) - from California to a small farming community in Arkansas. Monica is sceptical of his plan to start a vegetable farm and worries the struggle might be too hard on David, who has a congenital heart defect.

Movies about the Asian-American experience have predictable beats. There is reverence for food and its preparation, the struggle against patriarchy, family gossip, the oppressive need to excel and, of course, facing racism while trying to be accepted by the culture that produced the racists. These "bits", mixed in the right proportions, can produce either a drama or comedy.

In this winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Feature, Korean-American writer-director Lee Isaac Chung seems to be aware of the rut these stories seem to have fallen into, so this loose record of his boyhood covers the areas other films do not.

Taking centre stage is Jacob and his need to find his Garden of Eden in Arkansas, where farming land is cheap. The biblical reference is intentional as the Yis, like many Korean-Americans, are devoutly Christian.

Like Job in the Old Testament, Jacob's faith is tested by a series of setbacks and only wife Monica is clear-eyed enough to see that his desire to make a better life for his family and his ego are too closely intertwined.

Jacob's prickliness makes him hard to watch, so when Monica's mother joins the family from South Korea to help look after David, the story finds a more pleasant focus. The gentle, often comic moments between Grandma Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung) and the boy are the uplifting counterpoint to the tension-filled one between Jacob and Monica.

There is a third relationship, the one between the Yis and the larger community. Chung makes a smart decision to use it only as background and also frame the Yi's Southern neighbours as the exotic ones - the family find themselves amongst people who speak in tongues when praying and use divining sticks to search for wells.

Underpinned by an Emile Mosseri score that aches with nostalgia, as well as by winning performances by Youn as Grandma and Kim as David, this is a tender, stripped-down account of growing up with parents who came to a new country not just to seek a better life, but to be born again.

Chaos Walking (PG13)

109 minutes/opens March 11/not reviewed

The film stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley as Todd and Viola. PHOTO: ENCORE FILMS

Based on the young-adult dystopian book series of the same name by author Patrick Ness, the film stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley as Todd and Viola. He has been brought up on a planet where the men have "the noise", a force that makes their thoughts audible. She is an astronaut who crash-lands on his planet and discovers the truth of why women seem to have vanished from his community.

Wrong Turn (M18)

110 minutes/opens March 11/not reviewed

Matthew Modine stars in this horror feature about a group of young hikers in the Appalachian Mountains. PHOTO: WRONGTURNMOVIES/INSTAGRAM

Matthew Modine stars in this horror feature about a group of young hikers in the Appalachian Mountains who stumble upon a community that has lived in isolation since the 19th century.

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