'Minari' is an American movie, in Korean
#120: "Minari," The Golden Globes, "The United States vs. Billie Holiday," "This is Spinal Tap," "Hands on a Hardbody"
Edition 120:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: We’ll be discussing the immigrant tale at the heart of Minari. Then we’ll discuss why the Golden Globes matter (or don’t), and take a spin through the best of this week’s streaming options, focusing primarily on documentaries of all shapes and sizes. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Michael B. Jordan finally leans into his destiny as a world-beating action star.
Minari
($ Video On-Demand $)
Minari is an American movie. That’s the central truth, no matter what category the Golden Globes has boxed it into (“foreign language” even though it was an American production by an American director that takes place in America). The story of an immigrant chasing the American dream has been told a million times on the silver screen across the years, and it’s disappointing that a simple turning of the spotlight toward a non-English-speaking family doing the same still feels so fresh and new.
But we seem to have reached the point in history where the sons and daughters of all those brave immigrants who sacrificed their lives and well-beings for future generations have reached proper filmmaking age. And they have stories to tell.
Lee Isaac Chung tells this quasi-autobiographical story of his family immigrating from Korea to rural Arkansas — a setting so foreign to awards voters it might just as well be in Asia. The family’s patriarch dreams of escaping menial labor jobs to grow a farm of Korean vegetables, among them “minari,” a leafy herb-turned-metaphor that needs only time and opportunity to grow when planted in the right location.
It’s another entry in what I’ve taken to calling the “Second Wave” of stories about minority people groups.
In the First Wave, non-white characters are cartoonishly simple. In the case of Asian characters, this meant depiction as basically either a wise, old, purely good kung fu master or a purely evil…kung fu master. Think Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, movies full of stereotypes and veiled racism. For African-American stories, the Blaxploitation genre and the “magical Negro” trope come to mind.
I don’t believe most Asian filmmakers have been given the opportunity to advance beyond the Second Wave, in which minority artists have the authority to tell stories only about what they have personally experienced. These stories often have no choice but to focus on the trauma and struggle of being the “other” in a country where the power system isn’t too welcoming, lacing the characters with anger or hopelessness that inevitably makes them feel — and by extension the viewer feel — like they don’t belong.
The thing I most appreciate about Minari is that it doesn’t ask the very specific experiences of its characters to be representative of the immigrant experience as a whole. The concerns the family has about money, the fights the mother and father have, the relationships between siblings, or the slow integration into a community are all of the exact experiences that a white newcomer would have had they moved to rural Arkansas from California or Oklahoma or Georgia.
Which isn’t to say the movie shies away from the friction of cultural differences. The family faces casual and systematic racism that complicate the family drama, and the story is told with a level of empathy and authenticity that makes one form deep relationships with the characters he or she may not otherwise relate to.
Aside from excellent acting performances from movie-star-to-be Steven Yeun to the pentecostal neighbor played by Will Patton all the way down to ultra cute kid Alan S. Kim, what sets Minari apart is that it’s told with a warm, familiar glow that comes in stark contrast to the harsh, somber tone of something like last year’s Tigertail, a very similar immigrant story about a family from Taiwan.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week about why I actually preferred the brutal sacrifice of Alan Yang’s autobiographical story in Tigertail to this gauzy, sun-drenched version where the hard work was met with equal numbered moments of levity, even humor. Only then did I conclude that feeling the need to pit these two individual experiences against each other is probably exactly why we’re still in the Second Wave, and that the waves likely reflect society (which is also probably why an inordinate amount of “black movies” are still just about slavery).
Minari perhaps leans a bit too heavily on its beautiful aesthetic, and takes its fresh perspective as a license to revert to a few cliché storytelling devices along the way. Any quibbles I may have about the merits of the work are certainly overshadowed by the powerful, heartfelt impact that it had on me as a person and fellow American.
After watching Nomadland last week and Minari this week, the lesson is clear. Just because it’s an American experience I’m not familiar with, doesn’t mean it’s not as American as apple pie.
Something New
The Golden Globes: By this point you’ve either digested a million think pieces about the corruption and homogeneity of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its virtual awards show last Sunday, or you don’t care about it at all. So I’m not going to parrot those takes here. The Golden Globes have always been on sale to the celebrities most willing to glad-hand, that’s nothing new. It is only important for the same reason the Iowa caucus is important to the presidential election. It comes first, and therefore sets the narrative for the next few months of campaigning. Well that and, in a normal year, it features a bunch of celebrities in the same room getting rip-roaring drunk. So for our purposes the most notable takeaways from the ceremony are the death of Mank’s frontrunner status after getting shut out, Sacha Baron Cohen looking like a contender in two categories for two different movies, and Jason Sudeikis’ BIG time getting-divorced energy.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu): I’m usually not the person to make comments about the technical aspects of films, but the fact that this was so obvious for me makes this question all the more important: what the heck happened on the editing of this movie? Not only does it make the narrative of the story more confusing, which is the cardinal sin of editing, it’s also super flashy in a way makes it noticeable and incredibly distracting. It’s such a surprise to me coming from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels, though to be fair I wasn’t a fan of any of his other movies that I’ve seen. Andra Day’s performance as Billie Holiday is showy and excellent, nabbing her the biggest surprise win of last week’s Golden Globes ceremony, and she’s surrounded by interesting and notable performers. But the whole thing felt like a house held together by tape and glue. Very strange.
Allen v. Farrow (HBO Max): Well, any ambiguity arising from the first episode of this HBO miniseries about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow’s troubled relationship was pretty much cleared up with the retelling of Allen’s sexual assault of his adopted daughter and more-than-worrisome “relationship” with another of Farrow’s adopted daughters. The nail is in the coffin on Allen’s reputation, in my mind. It’s a well told story but it is difficult to watch, and at this point I'm not entirely sure if I want to continue with the final two episodes. I will recommend to those who are fascinated by true crime, or curious as to why Allen will no longer be mentioned in conversations about the greatest filmmakers of the past however many years.
Something Old
This is Spinal Tap (1984, HBO Max): Shame on me for living 25 years without having experienced this mockumentary cult classic, which parodies all of those breathless music documentaries with the perfect mix of verisimilitude and ridiculousness. If you’ve watched a lot of those “follow the band on tour” films, you’re going to die laughing at the way Rob Reiner (in his directorial debut!) twists the familiar scenes and set ups. And really, more than anything, it’s a masterclass in improvisation from Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and the rest of the rockers who come up with all of their hilarious “dialogue” on the spot. While you’re at it, keep out a careful eye for background extras played by then-unknowns Dana Carvey, Billy Crystal and Angelica Huston. Turn it up to 11!
Something to Stream
Hands on a Hardbody (Mailchimp): If you remember nothing else from this newsletter, click on this link and treat yourself to 90 minutes of mind-blowing documentary fun. It’s mid-90s rural Texas, and a car dealership is giving away a decked-out pickup truck to whichever of the 24 contestants takes their hand off the car last. It’s a three-day experiment in mental warfare, as sleep deprivation and monotony drive the already eccentric characters beyond the brink of madness. It’s really funny at first and over time unbelievably compelling, becoming for me truly one of the best “tournament” films of all time (step aside Bloodsport, Dodgeball and Kingpin). It’s super entertaining and I recommend watching it with as many other people as possible (in person or virtually), because there’s never been a movie so ripe for side commentary. Recommendations like this I can’t believe I’m giving away for free.
Trailer Watch: Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
When it comes to people who need only attach their name to something and Brinks trucks start backing up to their door to unload money, this movie serves as something of a passing of the guard. Tom Clancy’s books have been underwriting the Hollywood action genre for decades (evidenced by his name being literally half of the title here), and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan leveraged his newfound status as the bard of red-blooded America into a reportedly “nine-figure” overall deal with Paramount, off the back of his mega-hit show “Yellowstone” and movies like Sicario and Wind River.
This project appears to be something closer to the lowest common denominator between the two, aspiring for John Wick levels of bad assery and falling somewhere closer to Extraction. Still, scoring Michael B. Jordan in the lead role is a great start, and I’ve been saying for many years MBJ should lean harder into movie stardom rather than his greatest-actor-of-a-generation aspirations — as anyone who has seen a Daniel Kaluuya movie can attest — and this is a great start.