Youn Yuh-jung as Soon-ja in Minari

Best Supporting Actress at the 93rd Annual Oscars (2020)

Notable Quote:

“Broken ding-dong. Ding-dong broken.”

Synopsis:

A family of Korean-Americans moves to rural Arkansas (oh god, imagine a worse place … umm, not offense Arkanasan’s) to start a farm. Various family hijinks ensue.

The character:

Soon-ja is NOT like other grandmas, as her grandson David constantly points out. When she moves in to help out the family, he expects a warm matronly figure who bakes cookies, but instead, gets someone more akin to a teenage brother, who’s into wrestling and Mountain Dew. Soon-ja is not a great influence, taking her daughter’s money back out of the collection plate at church, and teaching her grandkids how to gamble and trash-talk. In short, she’s delightful.

On film (and hell, in life generally), we often tend to flatten the personalities of old people by dismissing them as “cute” and “spunky,” but Minari manages to avoid this trope, largely by presenting Soon-ja not just as feisty, but as vulnerable. She’s incredibly sensitive to the feelings of her grandchildren, especially David, who she wants to have a good life, despite his heart condition. And when Soon-ja has a stroke, she’s left incredibly weak and frail, and ends up causing a huge problem when [SPOILER], in her confusion, she burns down the family’s barn. It’s deeply upsetting, of course, but it also brings the character into reality.

The performance:

Youn Yuh-jung is new to most American audiences with her Oscar win (including yours truly), but she’s apparently been quite famous in Korea for forever. Classic USA to be like, oh wow, this lady is great, and everyone else is like, umm, we been knew. Anyway, this performance is wonderful. Yuh-jung is incredibly charming right off the bat – she absolutely lights up the screen when she appears.

But where she excels most is in bringing an emotional depth to a character that could be either a corny cliché, or a pitiable old person. Her relationship with David is incredibly endearing: it never feels sentimental, but instead, seems like a real connection that grew between two very different people. And when Soon-ja has a stroke, Yuh-jung paints a moving portrait of a woman clinging to her dignity in spite of her fragile state. And of course, this win broke boundaries, as Yuh-jung was the first Korean actor to win an Oscar for acting.

The movie:

Minari didn’t rock my world or anything, but it’s a really good movie. Most of all, it’s great to see a classic American story, the city family who moves to the country to start a new life, but in a way that expands the Americans that we typically see. The movie tackles poverty, nationality, religion, and childhood, and yet, it’s very focused in scope; we spend a lot of time just living with this family as they try to make things work.

Was the Oscar deserved?

Absolutely, Youn Yuh-jung has the range.