A 12 months after ‘Parasite,’ Korean-language film ‘Minari’ is discuss of Hollywood

By Jill Serjeant, Reuters

A 12 months after South Korean satire “Parasite” took Hollywood by storm, one other Korean-language film, “Minari,” is making waves throughout awards season.

But the 2 movies couldn’t be extra totally different.

“Parasite,” which made historical past in 2020 by changing into the primary movie in a overseas language to win a finest image Oscar, is a darkish satire about class and up to date society in South Korea.

“Minari,” now in U.S. film theaters and arriving in South Korea in March, is a young, quintessentially American story about an immigrant household within the Eighties attempting to higher themselves by beginning a farm in Arkansas. Not like “Parasite,” it was conceived, produced and filmed in the US.

“They communicate Korean and it’s a few household and there’s some Korean tradition concerned, however I feel this movie speaks quite a bit to what America is. It incorporates lots of people doing many various issues, many various walks of life, and in that method it’s fairly totally different from ‘Parasite’,” stated director Lee Isaac Chung.

An intensely private story, the movie relies partly on Chung’s personal life as a boy rising up in Arkansas, however there isn’t a satire and barely any point out of racism. As an alternative the movie, which has already gained a number of awards nominations, together with the Golden Globes, has been extensively embraced for its common humanity. Nominations for the Oscars haven’t but been introduced.

Korean-American actor Steven Yeun, who performs the daddy, stated he was terrified at taking over the function.

“It was scary to strategy my father’s era on a degree that isn’t simply caricature however actually simply attempting to get into their humanity. It opened my very own eyes into the methods during which I would misunderstand my very own father and that era as nicely,” Yeun stated.

Yeun, finest identified for his TV function in “The Strolling Lifeless,” is joined by Korean actors Yeri Han as his careworn spouse and Yuh- Jung Youn as his idiosyncratic mom in-law, who all dwell collectively in a sweltering trailer in a distant and unforgiving discipline.

Chung stated the nice and cozy response to the movie thus far has been greater than he hoped for.

“I do really feel hopeful and glad that it looks like audiences are keen to learn subtitles, and to look at movies that don’t replicate their very own experiences,” he stated. “It looks like they establish with what they’re seeing, and so they’re wanting extra to this shared humanity.”