Lee Isaac Chung, Steven Yeun and Alan S Kim on mak­ing Minari

In a piv­otal scene from Elia Kazan’s 1955 John Stein­beck adap­ta­tion, East of Eden, way­ward son Cal Trask (James Dean) presents his father Adam (Ray­mond Massey) with a wad of mon­ey, earned from his wartime bean-grow­ing busi­ness. The inten­tion of his ges­ture is to win respect and affection.

Adam, view­ing the ven­ture as a form of war-prof­i­teer­ing, refus­es to accept the gift, and says, ​“I’d be hap­py if you’d give me some­thing like your brother’s giv­en me. Some­thing hon­est and human and good.” Cal, dev­as­tat­ed by what he views as anoth­er emo­tion­al rejec­tion, wails as he tear­ful­ly embraces his shocked father, then flees the house. It’s a strik­ing­ly unvain per­for­mance from Dean, his anguish pal­pa­ble enough that audi­ences might recoil, uncom­fort­able with such a naked the­atri­cal dis­play. But it’s real – a full- bod­ied, shak­ing and yowl­ing por­trait of defeat.

A sim­i­lar moment occurs late in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, when the Yi fam­i­ly under­go a cri­sis on the farm they have sac­ri­ficed so much to keep alive. There are, indeed, numer­ous par­al­lels between Steinbeck’s nov­el (which was based on fam­i­ly exploits) and Chung’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film. Set some 60 years apart, these twin explo­rations of famil­ial dis­cord play­ing out against rur­al back­drops touch on sim­i­lar themes of faith, love, and the strug­gle for accep­tance and great­ness. But anoth­er con­nect­ing force comes in the form of Dean, whose spir­it lingers both in Minari’s DNA and the per­for­mance deliv­ered by Steven Yeun as strug­gling patri­arch, Jacob, who moves his young fam­i­ly from Cal­i­for­nia to a farm in rur­al Arkansas in pur­suit of the Amer­i­can Dream.

The real sto­ry began before Chung was born, when his father still lived in Korea. ​“James Dean was a huge part of his life. Some­how his movies con­vinced my dad to move to Amer­i­ca, and it’s weird because you watch those same movies and they should be dis­suad­ing you from com­ing to the US because there’s so much angst there,” says Chung. ​“But my Dad would see the back­drop of Amer­i­ca and he felt like it was a place of oppor­tu­ni­ty, and he would see James Dean as some­one who was able to express him­self as an indi­vid­ual. I think there was some­thing in that that my Dad want­ed to move towards, and away from the col­lec­tivist soci­ety in Korea.”

Some six decades after Dean inspired Chung’s father to move to Amer­i­ca and seek his own Amer­i­can Dream, Chung had a con­ver­sa­tion with the actor Steven Yeun while prepar­ing to shoot Minari. ​“He was talk­ing about his hair before the film, and he con­fessed to me that, ​‘A lot of times I think about this part, I think about James Dean,’ and that blew my mind. We were both excit­ed about that same per­son as a mod­el, and he’s not some­one that you would nat­u­ral­ly assume would be a mod­el for a film like this. For an immi­grant sto­ry.” But in plen­ty of ways, the mod­el of James Dean makes per­fect sense for a sto­ry like Minari: one about self-expres­sion, per­for­ma­tive mas­culin­i­ty, spir­it­ed rebel­lion and the search for iden­ti­ty and belong­ing against the sprawl­ing wilder­ness of the Amer­i­can South.

But Minari near­ly didn’t hap­pen at all. Chung didn’t grow up dream­ing of mak­ing films, even if he and his sis­ter con­vinced their father they should sub­scribe to the mail-order Colum­bia Video Club (which he agreed to, on the pro­vi­so he was allowed to choose half of the films). ​“Film­mak­ing was nev­er a pos­si­bil­i­ty for me. Grow­ing up where I grew up, you don’t think about that as a pos­si­bil­i­ty.” Born in Den­ver, Col­orado, Chung’s fam­i­ly moved to a farm in rur­al Arkansas when he was sev­en. He lat­er stud­ied biol­o­gy at Yale, plan­ning on becom­ing a doc­tor. ​“It wasn’t until my senior year that I start­ed to watch a lot of oth­er types of films, name­ly because I took a Video Arts class to ful­fil an Arts require­ment, and I thought I should watch some more seri­ous films that my friends talked about,” he laughs. ​“Wong Kar-wai stood out to me dur­ing that time, and I was dis­cov­er­ing a lot of Asian cin­e­ma. I would say those films were the ones that con­vinced me to pur­sue filmmaking.”

Trad­ing plans for med­ical school with grad­u­ate film stud­ies, Chung would tell friends about his child­hood on the farm, and his screen­writ­ing pro­fes­sor encour­aged him to write some­thing about the expe­ri­ence. ​“But I just nev­er felt it was the right time. I was war­ring with the belief that my sto­ry wasn’t inter­est­ing and that I would nev­er be able to get the fund­ing to make it the way that I want­ed, and so many things that made it feel like a futile exercise.”

So Chung made three fic­tion fea­tures (includ­ing Mun­yu­rangabo, the first nar­ra­tive fea­ture filmed in the Kin­yarwan­da lan­guage) and a doc­u­men­tary, as well as teach­ing col­lege stu­dents and men­tor­ing young film­mak­ers in Rwan­da. ​“It wasn’t until I start­ed to think maybe I don’t have many more projects in me, because the life of being a film­mak­er was becom­ing so dif­fi­cult, that I realised I should write a script of the thing that is the most mean­ing­ful to me, and see if I can get that made.”

Two years after Chung began writ­ing down his mem­o­ries, in the autumn of 2018, Steven Yeun – hav­ing exit­ed his reg­u­lar role as Glenn Rhee on AMC hor­ror series The Walk­ing Dead, as well as receiv­ing wide­spread acclaim fol­low­ing the Cannes pre­mière of Lee Chang-dong’s sub­lime Burn­ing – was passed the script for Minari by a mutu­al agent. ​“I read it imme­di­ate­ly, and the thing I loved about it was that it spoke from its own per­spec­tive,” Yeun says. ​“It didn’t need to explain itself or con­tex­tu­alise itself to any type of gaze or major­i­ty. It was just its own thing.” Film­ing began the fol­low­ing sum­mer – a rare instance of the Hol­ly­wood machine work­ing rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly. Yeun would also serve as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er as he ​“felt this was such a per­son­al, del­i­cate thing, that I want­ed to make sure I helped to pro­tect its integri­ty through­out the process.”

Cast­ing Yeun as his father was a no-brain­er for Chung. ​“It made a lot of sense and I could see it work­ing. I see so much in Steven that reminds me of the char­ac­ter that I end­ed up writ­ing – some­one who is real­ly dis­sat­is­fied with being labelled or cat­e­gorised in any way, and wants to real­ly find and express who he is. He’s not like my Dad – they’re very dif­fer­ent – but I was okay with that and I want­ed the film to go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion rather than exact­ly mim­ic­k­ing what had hap­pened in my life.”

It’s true that Jacob does seem to have plen­ty in com­mon with Yeun, who has spo­ken of his frus­tra­tion work­ing as an Asian- Amer­i­can actor in an indus­try beset with type-cast­ing and racism. Like Jacob, Yeun pos­sess­es a qui­et inten­si­ty on screen – it’s what made him so per­fect for the role of smil­ing sociopath Ben in Burn­ing, but allows him to change gears to give a warm, emo­tion­al per­for­mance as a father try­ing to rec­on­cile per­son­al ambi­tions with duty towards his fam­i­ly. It’s easy to pic­ture Yeun as a suc­ces­sor to Dean – both share a rare on-screen mag­net­ism and sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Their por­tray­als of mas­culin­i­ty as a work in progress – push­ing back against years of soci­etal expec­ta­tions to try and find a way toward indi­vid­ual free­dom and hap­pi­ness – seem to be in dialogue.

But if Yeun’s belea­guered dream­er is Minari’s heart, his character’s mis­chie­vous sev­en-year-old son David (an avatar for Chung), played by new­com­er Alan S Kim, is its soul. Minari is Kim’s first film role, but you wouldn’t know it from watch­ing him. ​“I realised ear­ly on I need­ed to let go of try­ing to find some­one who might remind me of myself,” admits Chung. ​“Alan had sent in an audi­tion and we lucked out. He’s a mir­a­cle. He checked all the box­es: he could speak Kore­an; he could feed his grand­moth­er pee and we wouldn’t hate him for it. He’s just so cute and mag­net­ic. We brought him to LA to do an audi­tion with Steven, and it was clear just from that that he was going to be alright.”

Yeun attests to Kim’s tal­ent too, which was evi­dent from the first time they met. ​“He just clicked right in with me and was present with me right then. I looked at Isaac like, ​‘This dude’s so legit’. The puri­ty in which he approach­es this work is some­thing that usu­al­ly gets sti­fled for most per­form­ers, regard­less of age.” Kim him­self – now eight – speaks of the expe­ri­ence with a famil­iar cheek­i­ness. ​“I don’t exact­ly remem­ber the audi­tion. I guess it was good!”

Kim is every bit as sparky and bright as Yeun and Chung say. Over Zoom he intro­duces me to his dog, a snooz­ing puff­ball called Cream, explain­ing, ​“We were going to call him Lat­te, but it didn’t real­ly fit this cutie.” After appear­ing at Minari’s Sun­dance pre­mière in a fetch­ing cow­boy out­fit, Kim became the festival’s favourite guest, though he remains lowkey about the whole affair. ​“My Mom chose that because she want­ed to!” he exclaims. Kim’s more inter­est­ed in hang­ing out with his dog than sar­to­r­i­al chat­ter, though he lights up when asked about his favourite movies. ​“I guess they would be the Har­ry Pot­ter movies, because they’re just so excit­ing. I like the mag­ic,” he paus­es thoughtfully.

“I think it’s just green­screen though, I’m not sure.” When it came to mak­ing his first fea­ture film, he’s admirably cool about the whole expe­ri­ence. ​“There were no hard parts,” he says, ​“except we were film­ing in Tul­sa, Okla­homa, and it’s so hot there. And there are tor­na­does that come there. So I was like, ​‘Is there gonna be a tor­na­do?!’” Luck­i­ly there weren’t any tor­na­does dur­ing filming.

The process of mak­ing Minari meant a chance to revis­it the past for both Chung and Yeun. The lat­ter moved from South Korea to the USA with his par­ents at the age of five, and it affect­ed his sense of self-iden­ti­ty deeply. ​“When I was grow­ing up all I real­ly want­ed – and per­haps I didn’t know clear­ly then – was to feel as human as the peo­ple I was around,” Yeun recalls.

“I couldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly explain it when I was young, which is why I tried to con­tort and con­form and break myself and sup­press myself in ways so I could feel hu- man in out­ward ways. By just… emu­lat­ing white­ness, to be quite hon­est with you. And it was a long time before I was able to see myself a lit­tle clear­er, give myself a lit­tle more free­dom, obtain a lit­tle more con­fi­dence and under­stand who I am so that I could approach some­thing like this.”

Minari is the per­fect show­case for Yeun’s tal­ent, allow­ing him to draw on per­son­al expe­ri­ence while bring­ing to life a char­ac­ter who holds the weight of two worlds on his shoul­ders. Jacob Yi is a link between the col­lec­tivism of his Kore­an roots and the indi­vid­u­al­ist Amer­i­can Dream sold to immi­grants who moved to the Unit­ed States in search of for­tune and free­dom. Although pol­i­tics might not play an overt role in Minari, the film’s ​’80s set­ting that means Rea­gan­ism looms large, push­ing Amer­i­cans towards the mantra that indi­vid­u­al­ism is the key to success.

Yeun speaks to Jacob’s inter­nal con­flict and desire to strike out in a world forc­ing him to choose between two bina­ries. ​“There are feel­ings of iso­la­tion that come with an immi­grant expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion, and these per­tain to Jacob around the desire to real­ly make some­thing for your­self. I think a lot about the dynam­ic between col­lec­tivism and indi­vid­u­al­ism, which are always butting heads. That’s the place that a lot of immi­grant peo­ple live in – that ten­sion – and they usu­al­ly pick one side, escape into the ghet­tos where they can just be with their own peo­ple, or they try to func­tion with­in the sys­tem as they know it.

“We were try­ing to tell the sto­ry of what it’s like when they’re just them­selves, liv­ing in that gap. Jacob is leav­ing col­lec­tivism, and he deeply wants to feel what it’s like to make a life on his terms. I think that’s the beau­ty of Amer­i­ca, the prospect of the Amer­i­can Dream. But that also has its neg­a­tives and I think liv­ing in that ten­sion is inte­gral to the sto­ry. We want­ed to cap­ture that feel­ing of not being firm­ly root­ed or plant­ed any­where, or in any­thing, except your­self. I deeply relate to that on a per­son­al level.”

Minari is a Kore­an sto­ry and an Amer­i­can sto­ry, hold­ing these two truths at the same time. This dual­i­ty is what makes it so beau­ti­ful and refresh­ing. But despite being set and filmed firm­ly in the Unit­ed States, there is still a sense that Hol­ly­wood isn’t equipped to han­dle a film which sits in the space between two worlds. In Decem­ber 2020 there was out­cry when the Hol­ly­wood For­eign Press Asso­ci­a­tion decid­ed that, as most of the film’s dia­logue is in Kore­an, Minari would not be eli­gi­ble for the Best Dra­ma Gold­en Globe, and would instead com­pete
in the Best For­eign Lan­guage Film category.

Oth­ers stepped for­ward to crit­i­cise the move, includ­ing Lulu Wang, whose film The Farewell was cat­e­gorised in the same way in 2019. When asked about the sit­u­a­tion, Yeun is philo­soph­i­cal: ​“We live in such a bina­ry world now – the way that we speak to each oth­er and con­nect with each oth­er some­times flat­tens dis­cus­sion and flat­tens the nuance of real life, and I think that’s kind of what the Globes thing is caught in. I don’t think any­one is explic­it­ly try­ing to be racist, or reject some­thing, they just don’t even know how to see it clear­ly. I think rules and insti­tu­tions can nev­er real­ly grasp the nuance of life and real­i­ty, because it’s a lit­tle bit grey­er than we under­stand, so when we try to define it, it always lacks. But I’m glad this is hap­pen­ing. I’m glad these things are butting up against each oth­er, because hope­ful­ly it expands their definition.”

The ten­sions between Kore­an and Amer­i­can cul­ture cre­ate moments of humour and con­flict in Minari. When grand­ma Soon­ja (the supreme­ly tal­ent­ed Youn Yuh-jung) comes to live with the Yi fam­i­ly, she speaks no Eng­lish, and David resents hav­ing to speak Kore­an to her, as well as hav­ing to sac­ri­fice half his bed­room to her. When Soon­ja calls David a ​“pret­ty boy” in Eng­lish, he protests, yelling ​“I’m not pret­ty! I’m good look­ing!” and runs away.

Thoughts turn once again to the spir­it of James Dean, and the push-pull in West­ern cul­ture around visions of mas­culin­i­ty. The poster boy for a type of man­hood that was unabashed­ly emo­tion­al, Dean was unafraid to give him­self over to the work, twist­ing his body into a vision of tor­ment incar­nate, but Rebel With­out a Cause still sug­gests shame in being seen as pas­sive and ​“fem­i­nine” as a man. Jim Stark bit­ter­ly resents his father, who is seen through­out the film wear­ing a frilly apron and defer­ring to his more stri­dent wife. It’s not enough for Jim to have par­ents who love him – he needs a role mod­el who embod­ies his idea of masculinity.

Of course, David Yi is too young to think too much about what it means to be a man, but this brief exchange with his grand­moth­er shows how we inter­nalise these ideas from a young age. Sim­i­lar­ly, Jacob har­bours a desire to con­tin­ue with his farm­ing dream despite his wife’s grow­ing feel­ings of iso­la­tion and resent­ment towards him. Chung agrees that the idea of per­form­ing mas­culin­i­ty weighed on his mind when writ­ing the film. ​“It’s that inner con­flict that we thought a lot about. That pres­sure is so heavy in Kore­an cul­ture, and espe­cial­ly was dur­ing that time.

It can be oppres­sive,” he says. ​“But at the same time it’s some­thing you don’t real­ly escape in a way. It stays with you.” Anoth­er resound­ing theme in the film is the impact of faith upon a fam­i­ly, both in God (the Yi fam­i­ly attend Church, and befriend a local Kore­an War vet­er­an named Paul, who has a rather intense way of show­ing his devo­tion to Jesus) and in one anoth­er. So much of Minari is about human con­nec­tion and human kindness.

Hear­ing Chung say he thought Minari might not even get made leads me to won­der whether film­mak­ing itself is an act of faith. ​“I feel like the work itself has the poten­tial to be a spir­i­tu­al process,” he says. ​“Espe­cial­ly since it’s some­thing that’s done in com­mu­ni­ty. The idea that if some­thing is done well it can bring a com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er always res­onat­ed with me. Obvi­ous­ly there are a lot of rela­tion­ships to faith with­in the film that are per­son­al for me, whether it comes with out­right scep­ti­cism to even the most mys­ti­cal and crazy expres­sions of that, like what Paul has. When it comes to a south­ern Amer­i­can sto­ry, that’s just the tex­ture of our lives and it’s some­thing that I knew I want­ed to incor­po­rate from the start. But one of the key things for me in the film is that shot of the fam­i­ly at the table togeth­er with Paul, almost like hav­ing Com­mu­nion. That’s the image of the film that I’ve always want­ed – that we were all at a table, work­ing togeth­er, believ­ing in something.”

It’s clear that mak­ing Minari was deeply mean­ing­ful for the whole team. In a cast and crew pan­el for Kore­an Amer­i­can Day mod­er­at­ed by San­dra Oh, Yeun spoke mov­ing­ly about play­ing a char­ac­ter like his own father, and how the expe­ri­ence meant reeval­u­at­ing the image of his par­ents built up in his mind over the course of his life. He expands on this in our con­ver­sa­tion, explain­ing the shift in per­spec­tive that devel­ops with age: ​“When you’re a child you look at your par­ents as this oppres­sion, this thing that doesn’t under­stand you and is keep­ing you down,” he says.

“Then you get to the oth­er side and you under­stand, maybe through hav­ing chil­dren of your own or just gain­ing a lit­tle per­spec­tive on it, ​‘Oh, they were right.’ But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly that they were right. The expe­ri­ence with Minari was that bal­ance of try­ing to not define our par­ents by their oppres­sive nature, but also to not over-praise them. Not because they don’t deserve it, but in order to see them as real, full dual­i­ty-hold­ing human beings. When you roman­ti­cise or lionise your par­ents you’re kind of push­ing them away by cre­at­ing them as this fix­ture in your life that’s sep­a­rate from you. But I realised that we’re not sep­a­rate, we’re just the same thing at a dif­fer­ent time under dif­fer­ent circumstances.”

Chung agrees, and laughs when I bring up Steven’s com­ments from the pan­el. ​“Steven artic­u­lat­ed it so won­der­ful­ly. That guy can talk for a long time, and it’s all true,” he says. ​“I didn’t know if I could get this film made, to be hon­est. There was a moment when I was writ­ing the sto­ry when I knew I wasn’t doing this to try to get a movie made, or to try to make some­thing that would be mean­ing­ful to oth­er peo­ple. It was to do some­thing that would be mean­ing­ful to me, to work through things in my own life and emo­tions, and to try to under­stand my par­ents, the dif­fi­cul­ties we went through back then, and the way that rip­ples down to who I am now as a dad, who’s prone to the same prob­lems and temp­ta­tions and all these things that can cause a fam­i­ly to go fur­ther apart.”

Turn­ing to a gen­er­a­tion so young we don’t even have a nick­name for them yet, I ask Kim about his own fam­i­ly and what he likes most about them. ​“Well, first thing, I like my dog. Next is that I can annoy my sis­ter some­times… and the third thing is that… as a fam­i­ly, we get a lot of things that are good.” He grins.

The expe­ri­ence of bring­ing such a deeply per­son­al sto­ry to life enabled Chung to address the feel­ings of ten­sion in his own mind between the past and the present. ​“Ulti­mate­ly I feel as though there was some kind of bur­den that was lift­ed in some way, that I was feel­ing about my par­ents, and I think that comes through accep­tance. What I was able to do with this sto­ry and with the writ­ing was to accept who they are and see them. Not through the lens of my expec­ta­tions of what they should have done, or through the feel­ing that I need to sim­ply hon­our and have grat­i­tude for them. But to see them as human beings.”

That desire to be seen ful­ly, in all our mul­ti­fac­eted glo­ry, is a con­stant strug­gle. Although Jacob starts off believ­ing he’ll strike out on his own, he comes to realise it’s much eas­i­er to work with oth­ers and to accept the out­stretched hand. ​“I don’t feel like I exer­cise that enough in my own life, but I have those wish­es,” Chung says.

Yeun adds that the expe­ri­ence of bring­ing this sto­ry to life means open­ing up the immi­grant expe­ri­ence to a wider audi­ence. ​“I think the jour­ney to see our­selves rep­re­sent­ed comes with this desire to guard and gate­keep it, and make sure no one else can touch it, and I deeply empathise with that instinct. But then there’s some­thing on the oth­er side of that, which means just let­ting go and pulling the walls down, allow­ing access for all of us to con­nect on a human lev­el. That was real­ly our goal.”

And Kim, when asked what he learned from mak­ing Minari, offers per­haps the most pre­scient piece of wis­dom of all: ​“You can only be your­self. So don’t try to be some­one you’re not.”

Minari is avail­able to watch at home from 2 April and is released in cin­e­mas 17 May. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.