This is a poignant tale of a Korean family pursuing the American dream by working a large tract of farmland in the state of Arkansas by way of California. The life of the parents on the West Coast was hampered by work as chicken sexers, something I never heard of before but makes sense if you think about it. The females are separated to lay eggs, while the males are sorted for meat, though in the story it sounds like the males are discarded as being useless. More on this later.
The most unusual and entertaining character here is the old grandma (Yuh-Jung Youn) who joins her daughter's family once they've settled into their trailer. It takes some time for the young son David (Alan S. Kim) to warm up to his grandmother, who takes pleasure in drinking water from the mountains (Mountain Dew!) and watching pro wrestlers pound each other on TV. David's offer of a cup of mountain water to grandma is the film's best humorous moment.
The dichotomy in the marriage between Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han) Yi is quite evident. Jacob is the eternal optimist in regard to establishing himself as a successful farmer of Korean vegetables, while Monica is a fatalist, not only regarding the outcome with the farm, but also relative to son David's health. I thought it somewhat fatalistic for her to suggest her son to pray to see heaven; it felt like she was preparing him for his death because of a heart condition. Fortunately grandma stepped in with sage advice to help David reorient his thinking on that. The local doctor the Yi's take David to offers further good news by stating that his heart is mending, with guidance that said "Whatever it is you're doing, don't change a thing". That almost felt like a rejection of Monica's negativity toward living the life of a chicken sexer and farmer's wife.
Unfortunately, a tragedy that occurs due to the grandma's own infirmity, causes a near total loss of the farm's first crop. The closing scene of Jacob discovering the location of the minari patch that grandma started with a few seeds suggests the rebuilding of their family life all over again, though that outcome is left to the imagination of the viewer. One must weigh Jacob's positive, forward looking attitude against his wife's tendency toward inevitable failure. My own sense is that they stay and make a go of it all over again.
Now, as to the job of chicken sexing. As often happens, when confronted with something new and odd, I'll do some research, and it turns out you can go on line and take a free test to find out if chicken sexer is one of your top career matches. A not too shabby sixty thousand dollars a year is possible, but on the flip side, it would be hard to come up with a more boring and tedious job than standing all day and separating baby chicks into different colored containers. The world record for a chicken sexer currently stands at 1,682 in an hour, though personally, I don't think that's possible myself, but I've never done it. By this time you probably think I'm making all this up, but you can check it out for yourself with an internet search. Watch the movie first though.
