Deborah Ross

A work of extraordinary delicacy, poignancy and tenderness: Minari reviewed

You will care more about the characters in this low-budget film than you ever would about those in a multimillion-dollar Marvel one

Alan S. Kim as David and Steven Yeun as Jacob in Minari. Credit: Altitude

In the summer of 2018, when film-maker Lee Isaac Chung was on the brink of giving up filmmaking and had accepted a teaching job, he found himself writing a list of what he remembered growing up as a Korean-American in rural America in the 1980s. These ‘little visual memories’ included, for example, the lunch pails his parents would take to their jobs at the chicken factory, or the minari — a herb used in Korean cookery and medicine — his father planted on their farm.

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