Minari

It's not often that a movie viscerally impacts you. That a movie peers into your soul. That a movie leaves you a better person for watching it. For me, that movie was Minari. These characters weren't characters to me, they were my family. Jacob, the struggling immigrant needing to make it in his dreams, constantly arguing with his wife, distrusting in the white people supporting him, was my father. Monica, crying when first seeing her mother after years, getting into screaming matches with her husband, holding on to religion and her culture in the hopes of surviving this new territory she was forced to move to, was my mother. And David, at first apprehensive to his grandmother, hating his culture and wanting to blend in, and always pushing the rules laid down by his parents, was my sister. In Minari, I see so much of my family and our struggles. This story encapsulates the fears my parents felt, knowing that they couldn't leave each other or their mission as they were too far in. I don't think I've understood the struggles my father went through to this degree ever before. Jacob and the Stone will forever fill me with so much emotion. Laughs. Smiles. And especially tears.