'Minari's' Lee Isaac Chung Talks Downside of the American Dream and Golden Globes Controversy
Minari, which opens today, is the most autobiographical film of this award season — a distinction that only highlights how painstakingly, yet disarmingly, the multigenerational drama was made. Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung mined his unusual Korean-American childhood in rural Arkansas, where his father took his family for a chance at a homesteading dream, to tell an intimate yet visually sweeping tale about an immigrant couple, Jacob and Monica (played by Steven Yeun, Chung's cousin-by-marriage, and Yeri Han), with two young children (newcomers Noel Cho and Alan Kim) whose aspirations will make or break their fragile marriage.