Will love keep us together, forever?

Minari ('Water Celery' American-Korean, English; 2021)

Written and Directed: Lee Isaac Chung

Most immigrants stories harbour melodrama which relies so heavily on wanting to play the victim card. They often portray their hosts as dysfunctional and that the pathetic immigrants are bullied and blamed for things that are no fault of theirs. Well, this one is different.

They left their motherland because it was too complicated there. Life in their newfound land is no leisure cruise either, they soon discover. Spending hours looking at chicken backside for the onerous task of chicken sexing is not cerebrally stimulating, but it pays the bill. When Jacob decides to move from California to the Ozark Land (Arkansas) for farming, his wife, Monica, thinks he is bonkers. With a young teenage girl to groom and a 'hole in the heart' stricken tween boy who needs regular medical attention, Monica is sceptical of the whole endeavour's success. Maternal Grandma, Soonja, is summoned from Korea to help to mind the kids. Herein starts a problem. The kids do not look at Soonja as Grandma material. She does not speak English and does not tell stories.

Monica, the religious of the two, hopes to find solace in the church and its congregants. Their first attendance proved an inconvenience as they could not fit into the mostly white crowd. Jacob getting along with his farming with the help of a war veteran, Paul, who himself is pretty fanatical with his religiosity.

Jacob feels that all life challenges can be met with sheer human intelligence, whereas his wife believes that God's grace guides us. So, when drought hits the land and he cannot get customers for his produce, the couple has to make tough decisions about their marriage.

Are decisions in a marriage a compromise? Is love strong enough an anchor to steer the metaphorical family ship through the storm? Can traditional teachings and intangible beliefs provide a bedrock in bringing everyone together to weather hurdles in life?

A sober, slow-moving movie tackles many immigrants' issues in a subtle, unhurried and non-condescending way.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The dark shadows beneath

Ozark (Miniseries, 2017)

The art of storytelling is the primary skill that keeps our human race going ahead with the passing of time. With narration, we are able to impart values and messages that help to carry through hardship. This skill also helps the leaders keep his flock together. When the herd is convinced with a precise narrative, its members would willingly crane their neck to the slaughter when the time is ripe. Traditionally, stories are laced with ethical values, and poetic justice would always prevail.

Over time, this type of set-up, somehow, seem not to excite the general public anymore. They thought they heard it all. They wanted more.

That is where our current stories seem to head. The main character of our tales are no more heroes but rather anti-heroes. They come with a dark past, involved in a subversive activity, and the whole premise of the storyline is get away scot-free from whatever crime that the protagonist is up to. The excitement is all about evading apprehension.

Purists may say that these guilty pleasures are actually stirrings of our primal desires that we have suppressed so long. For most of the time in our lives, we were expected to live our lives to the moral codes set by the society. Our every action was supposed to be exemplary for the generation next to emulate. Every member of the community had the sovereign right to criticise each others' seemingly wayward action. Now, every man is for himself. In the century of self, it all about self-gratification, self-exploration, self-discovery and self-development. Nobody lives for anybody else anymore. We are talking about individual rights, not doing the 'right' thing. In this post-truth era, there is more the 'right' thing to do. For every action which looks noble, we can just come up with a thousand and one reasons, why it can be damaging instead.

'Ozark' is a miniseries which just triggers these thoughts in its viewers. Marty Byrde, a financial advisor, has to sanitise a Mexican drug lord's laundered money in a record time to avoid repercussions. The excitement of seeing Marty using his wit, quick thinking and rhetorics to save his life and his family. Also hot on his trail are FBI agents who can sense that he is up to something no good.