At its core, writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s gentle drama is the classic saga of one man’s pursuit of the American dream.
It’s also a study of fitting in: finding peace as a family, and as immigrants coming to terms with their place in an unfamiliar land.
The setting is the 1980s. Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) has just moved his family from California to a 50-acre plot of farmland in rural Arkansas, purchased with all the money that he made during 10 years as a chicken sexer. Mindful of the ever-increasing arrival of Korean immigrants to this part of the United States, Jacob envisions a soon-to-be-thriving business growing and selling fresh Korean fruits and vegetables.
Jacob (Steven Yeun, left) and his family — clockwise from left, grandmother Soonja
(Yuh-Jung Youn), wife Monica (Yeri Han) and their children Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and
Davis (Alan S. Kim) —contemplate the challenge of transforming native Arkansas
landscape into an operational fruit and vegetable farm.
His wife Monica (Yeri Han) thinks he has lost his mind.
Chung opens his film as Jacob slowly leads his family down a country road; Monica is behind him, driving the truck with all their belongings. Jacob turns into an open field, and parks in front of a large mobile home where they’re now to live. Monica makes no effort to conceal her dismay. Her reaction is magnified by the absence of steps leading to the front door that stands four feet above the ground: a droll touch that deftly amplifies the insanity of what Jacob has gotten them into.
(The place does have electricity, although this detail is glossed over. Chung is occasionally sloppy that way.)
Worse yet — as they discover a few days later, during a torrential rain — a mobile home isn’t the smartest dwelling in a region known for tornadoes.
This cuts to the heart of Jacob’s personality, and his determination to By God Make This Work, despite being wholly ignorant of the region and so many other things. He’s also heedless of the fact that the land’s previous tenant — presumably a better-informed local — went bankrupt trying.
Ergo, as but one example, Jacob refuses to spend money on a dowser, insisting that he can find a well on his own.
There’s a certain nobility to Jacob’s stubbornness, and Yeun exudes an aura of quiet dignity and unyielding persistence. Han’s performance, in turn, is richly nuanced: On the one hand, she admires and loves her husband, and clearly wants to have faith in his grand plan … but, on the other hand, she feels it’s foolish, reckless and possibly even hazardous to their children. She’s also anxious about their isolation, and where her own life and marriage go, moving forward.
Conversely, Jacob holds firm to the notion that ultimately their children will benefit from his dream.
Eventually. Once the dust settles.
