David Canfield

Minari works quietly and methodically, embracing its lush rural setting with striking glimpses of its characters, alone against vast and empty landscapes. Chung’s directing feels drawn from memory, the scattered and sparkling quality of recollections, carefully assembled. It’s perhaps why every second rings so true.

It’s brainy, sure, but the emotional experience is what’s most vivid. The plot beats may confound you, but the feelings behind them are crystal-clear.

The plot, admittedly, is scattered; this is par for the course for Decker, but in a movie with more conventional bones, the shagginess sticks out. Shirley gorgeously invokes its subject’s style, however, via a disarmingly off-kilter score; handheld camerawork that gets intimate with characters’ psyches; and, most strikingly, a series of unforgettable images that intensify this study of female awakening and decay.