Minari

Why does a movie enter your life when it does?

Sometimes it’s a gift from God or if you don’t believe in such things then it is the universe bending your way.

When you are broke and suddenly an card arrives in the mail with just enough to get you through.

Sometimes a movie arrives exactly when you need it.

So I’m going to tell you what is going on in my life and then tell you about Minari.

After about 20 years of marriage and work life in my hometown, I took a new job across the country and have moved my wife and children from Florida to Indiana.

And it’s hard. The job is great and challenging. And my wife is working every day with little help and two autistic sons and a baby.

Our lives aren’t for the weak. They weren’t before we left and they especially aren’t now.

But we needed to take a risk and we needed to see how far this career could take us and we couldn’t do either of those things by staying in place.

So here we are facing new struggles and trying to fit into a new community and working towards a goal that may be closer but presents a whole new set of challenges.

Minari was on Netflix. I noted it was well regarded and put it on my list and mostly forgot about it.

It surfaced again with a warning that it was leaving Netflix last night and so I made it my evening entertainment.

Here’s the plot: A young father (only slightly younger than me) moves his family to Arkansas to pursue his dreams of becoming a farmer and being a success in America.

This causes strife with his wife and the drama and humor is doubled when his mother-in-law comes to live with them and help out.

My description is poor as it sort of sounds like a sitcom set-up. But it’s a natural and biographical story written (I assume) by the now grown up child of the parents in the picture.

The story moves with the rythyms of real life. The characters outside the family have their own separate wants and dreams that make them more than writer’s props.

I especially enjoyed how it handled the Korean family attending an all white church. If there was prejudice towards them it seems mild.

But it’s hard to be different in a place like that no matter how much people want to welcome you.

One of my favorite scenes is the morning after a sleepover when the young Korean child watches his new friend and his father hug and interact at a breakfast table.

The dad tells the kid he loves him. Then adds, “Don’t tell your mother I was out all night.”

That’s a scene with so much truth and sand you could plant a flag in it.

Religion and each character’s connection to it is explored. A worker with strange religious habits and a tendency to pray all the time helps the father with his farm. Why? Maybe because God told him to, but also (most assuredly) because he needs the money.

The conflict centers on the parents who have pushed themselves into a breaking point. He won’t relent in his pursuit of his dream. She feels betrayed by a man who has taken her away from her home (twice) and is now asking her to live in a trailer in Arkansas and pretend like it’s a castle.

When they arrive at the new home and she sees the trailer she stops him.

“This isn’t what you promised,” she says.

(I don’t take notes while watching a movie so if that’s not exactly what she said that’s close.)

How do you fix a marriage that faces that kind of problem? She wanted a life with other Koreans in Los Angelos. You took her to Arkansas.

I don’t want to give away their decision but I can tell you I was moved by it and was moved especially now given the massive changes in my own life.

Movies, books, songs and television are like that sometimes. Something so real that you can find yourself connected immensely and emotionally to a young family from Korea who worked as farmers 40 years ago in a state you have never visited.

But the connection is real and the film is a gift from on high.