Described as “a tender and sweeping story about what roots us,” Lee Isaac Chung’s much anticipated Minari (A24) is a film concerned with both the past and the future. Centring on a Korean-American family who relocate to a farm in Arkansas, the narrative is driven by the hope of a better place just out of grasp—the American Dream in all of its alluring shimmer. But beneath that, the work is about the past too. About history, family, what it means to belong to someone, and to call a place a home.
Such themes are ingrained in Minari‘s soundtrack too, composed by Emile Mosseri (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Homecoming, Kajillionaire) and released on Milan Records. According to the Los Angeles Times, Chung’s vision for the film was informed by “his own mental Polaroids,” and he asked Mosseri for a score capable of evoking the nostalgia of childhood memory. What results is a soundtrack caught between two worlds—the mundanity of daily toil expanded and deepened by something less rigid, another plane shaped by forces less physical, be they memories, dreams, or familial bonds.
Lead single ‘Rain Song’ is the perfect example of this spirit. A collaboration between Emile Mosseri and Korean translator and lyricist Stefanie Hong, the song sees Mosseri’s original lyrics translated into Korean and sung by one of the lead actors, Yeri Han. The track is performed as a lullaby in the movie, and this hushed emotive style is intrinsic to Mosseri’s sound. Those small moments before sleep where the present can be parked, a half-wake world where dreams are possible and the futures we desire can flutter into view.
Minari is set for release on the 12th February, and the soundtrack will be out via Milan Records on the same day.
