I’ve gotten into this point in previous reviews, but for the uninitiated, let me just get it out there: There are few things I find duller to (personally) sit through than films that critique or otherwise examine the ideal of the American Dream. Every time I see a new film dealing in this subject matter, it feels like I have to incentivise my own brain into paying attention; American Made had this effect on me, same with Home Sweet Hell and, to a lesser extent, Gold, so this seems to be regardless of a film’s individual quality as entertainment.
I just… don’t care about the idea, as even all the way over here in Australia, I was taught from a fairly early age that the American Dream is a fantasy not worth chasing. As such, I think I’ve developed a blind spot to it as a regular filmgoer; unless it’s told in a really out-there fashion (i.e. slathered in genre engagement and commentary on other things like with Knives Out), it just doesn’t register for me.
But since this is a film about a very specific form of that Dream, as an aspiration for immigrant families, simply writing this off as “not my thing” would not only be rather useless as critique (at least if I just left it at that) but would also serve to disregard that this isn’t a bad film by any stretch. It’s a very grounded slice-of-life affair about a Korean-American family, led by father Jacob (Steven Yeun), as they readjust to their new surroundings and Jacob’s plan to become a farmer, providing Korean vegetables to markets.
The film at large fixates on the tightrope walk that the Yi family are consistently wobbling on, between their ethnic culture and that of their new home, and the degree of assimilation thereof. The performances for everyone in the family work in how understated and grounded they are, with Steven Yeun shouldering a lot of masculine doubt on his shoulders in his ambition to make the farm work, no matter what the world (or his family) throws at him, and Han Ye-ri as his wife Monica doing her best to hold the family together, which is especially tough given their son David (Alan Kim)’s heart condition, and the… interesting mannerisms of her mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung).
It’s this constant tug-of-war between the traditions of old and becoming part of their new surroundings, something strained further by how this isn’t even the first time they’ve tried to lay down roots in American soil. And while Jacob’s woes and fears take center stage at times (right down to using the smokestack at a chicken hatchery as a metaphor for what he understands as the fate of unproductive males… which is a lot more chilling than I ever would have expected to get out of this), it’s ultimately David’s story and his perspective that the film takes. His confusion about Korean traditions, his apprehension that Soon-ja isn’t a ‘real’ (read: matching to the American stereotype of a) grandma, and even with the cringey moments of enfant terrible, his natural reactions to everything around him that the film holds up as important.
But again, it might be engrossing material to someone else, but I just couldn’t vibe with this thing. The pacing, even for a naturalistic story, doesn’t feel in any way urgent or gripping, the aforementioned cringe can feel like an entirely different brand of American filmmaking intruded into the production, and while the title nudges at an intriguing metaphor for this family and what they hope to create in this land, the way everything resolves only ends up repeating the same line about chasing the American Dream that every other iteration has already touched on.
Truth be told, I get the feeling that my lukewarm reception to this is for some of the same reasons why I wasn’t that hot on Raya And The Last Dragon: Underneath the different cultural aesthetic, it’s just more of the same-old-same-old. I mean, as a family drama, the perspective given is certainly fresh and has definite merit as a story. But since this thematic route seems to be the only thing nowadays that actively gets me in the mode of “not to my taste”, it puts me in a difficult position as a critic. Essentially, it’s a good film, and there’s certainly an audience for it (this has been getting rave reviews since it premiered at Sundance last year, and even with my misgivings, I can at least see why that is), but said audience doesn’t include myself.
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