Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Minari Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 20, 2021

Unless you are descended from some of the indigenous tribes that populated the North American continent for centuries before the "others" arrived, chances are your family has its own immigration story or stories, some of which have probably been passed down from generation to generation in order to help preserve a sense of history. Lee Isaac Chung's descendants will have the convenience of simply watching Minari to get a somewhat fictionalized version of Chung's own story, as Chung himself discloses in some of the supplements included on this new Blu-ray release from Lionsgate Films. If you caught the most recent Academy Awards broadcast (and some curmudgeons may joke that particular broadcast should have been a "catch and release" situation), one of the few highlights of the ceremony was the acceptance speech that the wonderful Youn Yuh-jung gave when she won the Best Supporting Actress category for her beautiful work in Minari as the focal children's grandmother. Minari is in some ways a simple, and perhaps even predictable, story, and yet it's so incredibly heartfelt and filled with telling detail that it really serves as a palette refresher for anyone who hungers and/or thirsts for a very real feeling dissection of one immigrant family's "adventures" as they try to fitfully chase the ever elusive American Dream.

In the making of featurette included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, Lee Isaac Chung gets into the perhaps weirdly delightful fact that his Korean farmer father chose to settle down in Arkansas, of all places, and that little Lee did indeed tend to nearby minari fields his own grandmother hand planted, just as happens in this film (for those who are unaware, minari is a Korean vegetable). Now, one of the film's more deliberate conceits is the obvious use of a native Korean vegetable being transplanted to new soil as an overarching symbol for what Yi family itself is going through. As the film opens, father Jacob (Steven Yeun, Academy Award nominated for this performance) has pulled up family stakes in California, and taken everyone to, yes, Arkansas, where he's bought acreage with a "double wide" sitting on it. Wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is obviously distraught about it all, especially their living conditions, and the two have several nearly physically violent interchanges about what's going on in their lives in general and their marriage in particular. In one of the film's most sweetly heartbreaking moments, the two Yi kids, Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim, who should have been Academy Award nominated for this performance) make little paper airplanes inscribed with "don't fight" on them which they sail out into their parents' fracas in the living room.

With Jacob making some boneheaded decisions about his farming career and both parents stuck in a "chick sexing" job, things seem to be spiraling out of control, exacerbated by the fact that little David has a heart condition which keeps his mother in particular in a perpetually anxious state. Initially, the kids tag along to the chicken gender discernment job their parents hold, but ultimately Monica's slightly crusty but still absolutely lovable mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) is brought over to help with childcare duties. The film then begins to detail the nascent relationship between the grandmother and the grandkids, David in particular.

Now there's frankly nothing earth shattering about what transpires, even with hints of melodrama with regard to some of the locals the Yi family has to contend with, but that's arguably one of Minari's outstanding strengths. Instead of piling on untold dramatics, this is a film of often relatively "small" moments which still touch the heart with a rare profundity. There's a certain sanguine quality that can creep into families once they've matriculated more or less successfully to the United States, but what Minari makes so abundantly clear is how treacherous things can be both physically and probably especially emotionally for newcomers.

What makes this film so remarkable is the absolutely natural interplay in the family dynamics. The parents are both at each others' throats and supportive at various times, which will strike any married couple as completely accurate (and, yes, that's a kinda sorta joke), but the relationship between the kids and both their parents and especially their grandmother is beautifully wrought and filled to the brim with emotional nuance. If the story does ultimately tip just slightly toward melodrama in its closing act, it doesn't play things too hyperbolically, and the result is one of the most memorable "family films" (in both senses of that phrase) of this or any other year.

Minari Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Minari is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Arri Alexa Mini and a 2K DI as the relevant data points. This is a solid if intentionally gauzy looking transfer, with a nice accounting of a natural looking palette and very little if any outright aggressive grading (some of the interior scenes in the "double wide" have a somewhat yellowish tint, but that seems to be as much due to lighting as anything else). The outdoor material offers substantial fine detail levels on the fine, filigreed minari plants, and close-ups reveal excellent detail levels on fabrics and even facial features. There are some minor deficits in shadow detail in a couple of nighttime scenes, including one sequence that may indeed have been graded toward blue tones. I noticed no major compression anomalies.

Minari Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Our specs for audio tracks only allow for one "main" language, and so the listing above showing both English and Korean DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks is actually the sole track on the disc, which tends to ping pong back and forth between the two languages. There are forced subtitles for the Korean language moments, and optional English or Spanish subtitles for the rest of the presentation. Like the video side of things, Minari is often quite subtle in its sound design, but the evocative (Academy Award nominated) score by Emile Mosseri wafts invitingly through the side and rear channels, and the glut of outdoor material also provides nice opportunities for well placed ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free presentation.

Minari Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director Lee Isaac Chung and Actress Yuh-Jung Youn is a wonderful listen, with an obvious rapport between the two.


• Sowing Seeds: Making Minari (HD; 13:25) is a nice piece with some sweet interviews.


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 3:18)

A digital copy is also included.

Minari Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Having recently reviewed Nomadland, which beat out Minari for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards celebration, I have to say if I were a voting member of the Academy, I probably would have given the statuette to this film. This story is sweet and in some ways unassuming, which probably only helps to amplify its significant emotional power. Performances are top notch, including the two very young performers essaying the roles of David and Anne, and the inimitable Youn Yuh-jung is a force of nature as the, well, transplanted Grandmother. Technical merits are solid and the few supplements included are enjoyable. Highly recommended.