Bong Joon Ho was very encouraging, says ‘Minari’ director Lee Isaac Chung

By PTI
NEW DELHI: “Minari” director Lee Isaac Chung says getting praised by any person with as sturdy a watch for element as Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho was a “real treat”.

Lee spoke to the “Parasite” filmmaker over a cellphone name and although he was initially nervous, he was elated when he came upon that Bong appreciated his movie.

“I feel like he was very happy for us and he’s very encouraging. I’m so glad he likes the movie. That’s a real treat for me. He has a very strong eye for detail. I was nervous talking to him but I was so glad that he picked up on a lot of details that excited me about the film,” the filmmaker informed PTI throughout a digital roundtable with worldwide journalists.

Lee, 42, did not watch “Parasite” whereas he was enhancing “Minari” as he was afraid that it will find yourself influencing him.

He waited till he was finished enhancing his film to lastly watch the film.

“And I was blown away by what he (Bong) did (in the movie). I told him, as we were on that call together, that he made the perfect movie.”

While “Parasite” was a darkish satire on the rich-poor divide in South Korea, Lee’s semi-autobiographical drama comes from a extra private area.

ALSO READ | Loved Oscar winner Parasite? Here are 5 extra Bong Joon-ho motion pictures to binge-watch throughout COVID-19 lockdown

It revolves round Jacob (Steven Yeun), a youn Korean-American father who alongside along with his spouse and two youngsters strikes from California to a farm in rural Arkansas in quest of their American dream in Eighties.

Predominantly in Korean language and slated to be launched in Indian theatres by PVR Pictures on April 16, the movie has emerged as one of many front-runners on this 12 months’s Hollywood award season.

“Minari” is vying for six Oscars on the 93rd Academy Awards, together with greatest image, greatest director, greatest actor (Yeun), and the perfect supporting actress (Youn Yuh-jung).

It has already received the perfect foreign-language Golden Globe and the best-supporting actress BAFTA for Youn.

Lee is stunned by the extraordinary journey the mission, which was a low finances movie and a “stressful shoot” for him, has had.

“I had no idea any of this would happen. It’s been a wild ride and I have been touched by audiences who are connecting with this film,” he mentioned.

There was a robust echo of the previous as Lee started filming “Minari.

The director remembers that after they moved to Arkansas within the 80s, it was the time of a fantastic farm disaster in America, and whereas he was prepping for the movie, he learn information tales that there was a risk that it was taking place once more.

“So I felt like there’s something happening in which there’s a cycle that’s happening for me on a personal level and then perhaps in our country in which farming, and also immigration was becoming quite an issue, and it continues to be an issue now,” he mentioned.

Lee additionally believes that the ’80s period someway captures one thing of the current.

“We couldn’t have imagined that the pandemic would raise another echo of what’s happening in the story, which is a family having to come together due to suffering and due to catastrophe in a way,” the director mentioned, explaining that the story emerged from a private area however someway discovered “more echoes” alongside the best way.

“That has been the character of this mission.

Somehow, we’re submitting to one thing within the artistic means of discovering new issues as we go, I suppose,” he added.

While writing Jacob’s character, Lee thought quite a bit in regards to the cinema of American display screen icon James Dean as he felt he needed somebody like that for the position.

“An vital theme that I considered whereas I used to be writing Jacob was a scene from ‘East of Eden’ the place James Dean discovers that his crops are rising, after which he runs round within the discipline and rolls within the grime.

He does one thing related in ‘Giant’ when he discovers oil, there’s this huge celebration.

“I keep in mind feeling like that is the type of Jacob that I would like, and particularly for the scene the place he discovers water and the scenes when he will get the tractor and when farming appears to be going his means.

I did not have any particular actor.

But lo and behold, I really feel like I discovered James Dean in Steven.

” The director said he was surprised when Yeun, a major Hollywood Korean-American star with credits such as “The Walking Dead” and “Burning”, additionally introduced up Dean throughout their dialogue.

“I keep in mind actually being floored when he introduced it up as a result of that was in my thoughts as I used to be writing.

So it was nice that we obtained to come back collectively on this and to create these characters collectively,” Lee mentioned.

The movie additionally options Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho and Will Patton.