Five stars for 'uncontrived, authentic' Minari

Minari, which tells the story of a Korean-American family building a life in rural Arkansas is "sensitively written and acted and beautifully shot," writes Nicholas Barber.

Like most films, Minari ends with a disclaimer assuring us that it is a work of fiction, and that any resemblance between its characters and real people is purely co-incidental. Don't be fooled. Lee Isaac Chung's winning family drama is actually a bittersweet of the writer-director's childhood in rural Arkansas, and nearly everything in it is drawn from his own memories. Even if you didn't have any background information, though, you would put money on Minari being semi-autobiographical. Each detail is so specific, each scene so uncontrived, and each performance so authentic that it never feels as if someone has made up a story; it feels as if they are sharing vivid anecdotes from an upbringing that was rich enough to be put on screen without embellishment.

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The film is set in the 1980s – although, typically, Minari is so subtle about its period trappings that it could be a decade earlier or later. The character who represents Chung himself is David (Alan Kim), the seven-year-old son of two thirty-something Korean immigrants, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han). Up until now, the Yis have lived in California, where Jacob and Monica worked as chicken sexers in a hatchery. Every day they were given a box of young chicks and would separate these fluffballs into separate groups according to gender. Female chicks were allowed to survive, because they would eventually lay eggs, whereas male chicks went straight into the incinerator – and that's why, Jacob tells his son, men have to make a special effort to prove that they aren't useless.

After a decade of "staring at chicken's butts", Jacob had made his own special effort by buying 50 acres in Arkansas. He and Monica still have day jobs at a nearby hatchery, but Jacob plans to spend his spare time, and his savings, on growing crops which he can sell to his fellow Korean immigrants. The film, on one level, is a piercing but comionate portrait of macho pride and ambition. David and his big sister Anne (the under-used Noel Kate Cho) are pleased to have their own meadows, woods and streams to explore. As shot by Lachlan Milne, the sun-kissed property is a green, unspoilt Eden – and questions of faith and religion are another theme. But Monica is unhappy about being stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a mobile home that could be torn to shreds by the next tornado. The area has "the best dirt in America," argues Jacob. "That's why you chose this place," asks Monica. "Because of the dirt">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });