The Invisible Artistry of Asian Actors
Only when he began editing Minari did the writer-director Lee Isaac Chung see exactly how much his cast had done for the story. The film, about a Korean American family starting a farm in 1980s Arkansas, was inspired by his childhood, but Chung told his actors he didn’t want them imitating anyone he knew. So instead, they brought their own interpretations to the characters and made Chung’s tale theirs, too. “It’s easy when you have these actors, and every take is good,” he told me over Zoom last month, chuckling. “You have nothing bad to work with.”
Yes, Chung is overflowing with praise for his cast, whom he thanked in his acceptance speech after Minari won a Golden Globe for best foreign-language film on Sunday. But he’s concerned that one actor isn’t seeing enough appreciation: Yeri Han, who plays Monica, the anxious wife of Steven Yeun’s idealistic Jacob. “In the editing room, she was the one who we were always centering our emotional story around,” Chung said of Han. “It’s her face, it’s her looks, and the way she picks at a bedspread because she’s upset. These little, subtle things that we knew: ‘This is making the film what it is.’” He paused. “And unfortunately, it’s invisible.”
[Read: ‘Minari’ will draw you in with its beautiful little details]
is a curious word to apply to Han, whose restless energy and abundant warmth are a constant presence in the movie. She flits through her family’s new trailer home, tidying up and parenting
