Five Years On, Minari Still Cuts Through the Hollywood Machine With Its Own Knife

Minari is a quiet film about failure, and it earns its quiet through patience. Lee Isaac Chung directs his own semi-autobiographical script about a Korean American family moving to rural Arkansas in the 1980s, and the result is a drama that trusts its audience to sit with discomfort. Steven Yeun plays Jacob, the father who believes the soil is fertile and can sell Korean produce to Dallas vendors, while Han Ye-ri plays Monica, his wife, who despairs at the mobile home and the distance from a proper hospital for their son David, who has a heart condition. The film premiered at Sundance in 2020, where it won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.

Trailer, via A24.

The Yi Family’s Struggle

Jacob digs a well himself rather than hiring a water diviner, a decision that backfires when the well runs dry. He pays for county water, then loses water in the home entirely. The vendor in Dallas cancels an order at the last minute, and the family loses income. These setbacks are not dramatic set pieces; they are small, cumulative humiliations that pile up against Jacob’s optimism. Monica grows desperate enough to want to return to California, straining a marriage built on shared sacrifice.

Youn Yuh-jung plays Soonja, Monica’s mother, who travels from South Korea to live with the family and watch the children during the day. David avoids her because she does not fit his idea of a grandmother, but Soonja persists. She plants minari seeds by the creek, which she brought from South Korea, and tells David about the plant’s resilience and usefulness. Through teaching him the card game hwatu, bandaging his wounds, and soothing his fears about his heart condition, she wins his trust. The film’s title, Minari, becomes a metaphor for the family itself: small, adaptable, stubbornly alive.

The Cast Holds the Weight

Yeun gives Jacob a weary, patient presence that anchors the film. His performance is not a scream; it is a steady refusal to give up, even when the world around him is crumbling. Han Ye-ri brings a raw, exhausted desperation to Monica, a woman who understands the stakes better than anyone else in the frame. Youn Yuh-jung’s Soonja is the film’s emotional engine. Her warmth and persistence are the reason the family survives.

Will Patton plays Paul, an eccentric Korean War veteran who speaks in tongues and offers odd wisdom. Noel Kate Cho plays Anne, David’s sister, who watches her parents fight and learns early what it means to carry a family’s burdens. Alan Kim plays David himself, a boy whose heart condition hangs over every scene, and his performance is delicate without being sentimental. The ensemble feels lived-in, not assembled for effect.

Where the Film Lands

Minari is not a triumphant story. It ends with a well that ran dry, a lost order, and a child who barely survived a heart scare. But it also ends with a grandmother who taught a grandson to play cards, a creek planted with seeds, and a family that stayed together. That tension between failure and endurance is the film’s true subject.

The film’s score adds to the film’s quiet power. What stands out is Chung’s refusal to romanticize the Yi family’s hardship. This is not a story about triumph over adversity; it is a story about surviving it, day by day, with love as the only resource.

Minari is a small film with a large heart. It asks its audience to sit with discomfort, to watch a family fail and keep failing, and to find beauty in the cracks. It is a story about what roots us, and it shows us exactly how.

drama · Korean American · Minari · Steven Yeun · Sundance