🌱 minari - movie thoughts
Assumed Audience: You’ve seen Minari and you’re interested in stream-of-consciousness, unstructured thoughts on the movie.
A real heavy movie. It was interesting how it didn’t follow a traditional flow. It wasn’t a hero’s journey, there wasn’t a significant change in the main character. It didn’t follow the advice that “in fiction, a character must change by the end of the story”. Though it did in some ways follow the advice of “in a drama you want to evoke pity and fear in readers”.
It was a flat sine curve, very mild ups, and equally frequent significant downs. You got the sense that they may continue on like that forever. Monica would never really bring herself to leave. Joseph would never give up on his dream to prioritize his family. There’s such a tenuous moment at the end, that you don’t even come away with the feeling that anything has changed. Yes, he cares about Monica enough to make sure she doesn’t die. But moments before, it didn’t even occur to him that his mother-in-law might be in trouble. All he thought of was the farm. So it’s not like a decisive change. Just the hint that something might be different.
The music was wonderful, though it sometimes hinted at a level of upcoming drama that wasn’t quite there. The cinematography was secretly meditative and beautiful.
Is there anything I’d want to take away for my story-telling? I think this kind of flatness can only happen well in film. Though Catcher in the Rye is an example in literature. And maybe Mrs. Dalloway, though I don’t remember much of the book. Film has the extra benefit (at least in a movie theater-like setting) if truly dissociating you from your surrounding. Unlike a book, which only has your eyes and your brain. A movie theater becomes like a sensory deprivation tank, helping you focus on a film. I don’t think Minari is a movie you can watch at home with the lights on. It needs a full, lights-out experience. I remember about a third of the way into the film thinking “Oh man, is it 2 more hours of this?”. And it was, but I didn’t quite mind.
It was life-like. That’s what life is like. Ups and downs, but nothing feels particularly dramatic in the way it does in a movie.
Every post on this blog is a work in progress. Phrasing may be less than ideal, ideas may not yet be fully thought through. Thank you for watching me grow.
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