Lee Isaac Chung's stirring family drama Minari—which is streaming now—has already received a rapturous response from fans and critics, and is poised to be an Oscar darling. The movie, released by A24, received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score (Emile Mosseri), Best Supporting Actress (Yuh-Jung Youn), and Best Actor (Steven Yeun).
In a first-person essay for The Los Angeles Times, writer-director Chung explained that he was inspired to write a film that mined his own life experiences after reading Willa Cather's My Antonia and reflecting on his adolescence spent on an Arkansas farm.
"Insecurities and missteps can plague writers and artists who come from rural places. We worry that our provincial life experiences won’t gain the approval of urban curators, so we assimilate ourselves to other, more sophisticated voices," he wrote.
Modeled after Chung's family, the movie is an intimate look at a group of Korean-Americans caring for one another, persevering through hardships, and making their own way in the south. Minari gets its name from a Korean spring vegetable which the family grows on their farm. Here's how you can watch the boundary-breaking film at home.
Minari is available to watch on most major streaming platforms and in some theaters.
Interested viewers can rent Minari on YouTube, Amazon, Apple, and Google Play, but because it's a brand new feature, it runs $19.99 on each of them.
Folks who are comfortable going to a movie theater can also find local screenings on Fandango and Showtimes.com.
The A24 website lists the full range of viewing options.
The film tells the story of a Korean American family that moves to Arkansas in the 1980s.
Minari was inspired by Chung's upbringing. His family moved around the U.S. before settling in Arkansas when he was five. Per The Guardian, Chung said he wanted to make a movie that would resonate with the people he was raised alongside in that rural community, and one that focused on the unique challenges his family faced at that time.
"I grew up feeling like the main obstacles that we were trying to overcome had more to do with how we survive together as a family, and less to do with external relationships that we had with the community," he said. "Racism did exist and I’ve experienced some horrific incidents, but when I think about those days, it’s more about farming and the difficulties of trying to love each other.”
Prior to writing Minari, Chung was actually considering giving up filmmaking entirely and settling into a more "practical" life teaching screenwriting at a university, he told The New York Times.
The film centers on David, the family's seven-year-old son (in some ways a stand-in for Chung), as well as sister Anne (Noel Kate Cho), parents Jacob (Oscar nominee Steven Yeun) and Monica (Han Ye-ri), as well as their grandmother Soon-ja (Oscar nominee Youn Yuh-jung). Yeun's character wants to grow items on the farm that can be sold in Korean-American markets.
In his own interview with The Times, Yeun spoke about his reaction when he read the Minari script for the first time.
"Isaac has such a way with words, and he captured something I deeply wanted to say on multiple levels right on the page. When I read it, I was so moved by it. I deeply connected with it," he said. "Isaac maybe didn’t write something that was new to reality, but he wrote something that’s new to our collective understanding of what reality is."
Minari has a chance for unprecedented wins at the Academy Awards in April.
In that interview with the Times, Yeun downplayed the historic implications of his nomination, but spoke about the way that his Korean-American heritage is central to his identity.
"It’s not something I really concern myself with," he said. "I carry with me my culture and who I am, and if that challenges or breaks through things, that’s wonderful."
Yeun was born in Seoul and eventually moved to the United States. He has starred in acclaimed projects in both America (Sorry to Bother You, The Walking Dead) and South Korea (Burning, Okja). With Sound of Metal's Riz Ahmed also nominated for Best Actor, this is the first time two men of Asian heritage are up for the award simultaneously.
Youn Yuh-jung has already achieved something tremendous herself, becoming the first South Korean actress to receive a Best Supporting Actress nomination. She's been a major star of Korean film and TV for decades, winning many awards for roles in The Housemaid and Woman of Fire.
In 2020, Parasite made Oscar history as the first foreign language film to win Best Picture, as well as Best Director, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Watch Minari before the Oscars on April 25. Whether or not it takes home any of its six nominations, it has already broken significant barriers in the film world.
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Grant Rindner
Grant Rindner is a culture and music journalist in New York. He has written for Billboard, Complex, and i-D, among other outlets.
