Minari is not a common name, at least for Western culture, but if we travel to the East, we will see that they are a little more familiar with the term. Today we invite you to discover the poetic meaning behind the title of this film directed by Lee Isaac Chung, starring Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh Jung, Alan Kim and Noel Kate Cho, and that is getting good word of mouth as a potential Academy Award and Golden Globe winner.
While the film tells the story of a Korean-American family moving to a rural region in the 1980s, the word Minari, as such, is a term associated with a vegetable or plant in Korean culture. The interesting thing about the vegetable is that once it dies, in what is called its "second season," it is reborn and grows even stronger than before. The director said in an interview "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.”
Actress Youn Yuh Jung, who plays the wise grandmother of the family, says that minari can be used in several ways as it can be combined with other foods, but she noted that it does not have a nice smell. "It is smelly," she says.
If we try to compare it with some food more familiar to Latin American countries, experts say it would be similar to watercress, but that Minari has a much stronger herbal flavor. They also stated that it is often labeled as Chinese celery or Japanese parsley.
Whether as a culinary element or as a message of rebirth, hope and love, Minari is a film we cannot miss. Even though the release date has not been set in Latin America yet, we hope to have news soon.
Stay tuned!
