Those who have watched Minari know what a true treasure director Lee Isaac Chung was able to create.
The film — starring Steven Yeun, Yeri Han and Alan Kim — highlights a Korean-American family's move from California to an Arkansas farm in the 1980s and their quest for stability and success amid arising challenges. Not surprisingly, Minari's masterful storytelling and heartfelt acting has resulted in several awards and Academy Award nominations this year.
But while viewers may enjoy what they see on screen, they might also find fulfillment from the deeper meaning behind the title of the Oscar-nominated film.
What does "minari" mean?
Minari is a plant native to East Asia and found in a lot of South Korean cooking, according to FoodNetwork.com. Specifically, this name describes what others call "pennywort" or "water parsley" and is known for its somewhat bitter and peppery flavor. It is sometimes, but not always, found in kimchi, spicy fish soups and stews or paired with pork belly.
Speaking with The Wrap, Lee Isaac Chung himself explained the beauty of minari and how it relates to the movie we all know and love today:
The interesting thing about it is that it’s a plant that will grow very strongly in its second season after it has died and come back. So there’s an element of that in the film, so it grows very expansively without doing much to it. It’s a poetic plant in a way for me.
The acclaimed director went on to echo this minari metaphor while speaking with NPR about how he came to pen the outline of the movie. As he explained, he jotted down 80 memories while at a local library and realized that there was a good story arc coming from the paper. The resilient image of minari, meanwhile, helped him frame the plot.
"Ultimately, a patch of minari, this Korean plant that the grandmother plants, that my grandmother planted, that ended up being the only thing that really thrived on that farm," he told the outlet. "So once I had those two poles in mind of where the story starts and where the story ends, I just started to shape all the memories together into a narrative."
He later reiterated in the interview how the minari plant specifically spoke to him: "It's a hardy plant. It kind of grows in places where you can't grow anything else. It can take root in very poor soil conditions. And what it ends up doing is it actually revitalizes the soil. And it cleans up the water. It has a purifying effect."
