++This strategy could help America’s schoolchildren make up for lost time. +
++The moment of truth for Gregory Heights Elementary School came last June. +
++The school in Burien, Washington, had closed its buildings in the spring when the pandemic forced lockdowns around the country. That meant students — about 50 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and about 40 percent of whom are learning English as a second language — traded classrooms for worksheets and Zoom meetings, and saw their teachers a lot less than before. After a few months of this, “we began to just think about how many hours of lost instruction we had,” principal Robin Totten told Vox. “Going into the next year, if that didn’t change, what were we going to do?” +
++One option was remediation: taking kids back and redoing everything they’d missed. But research from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina showed this approach didn’t work well — students got bored doing work below their grade level and didn’t make enough progress. So Gregory Heights, along with its district, Highline Public Schools, tried something different: acceleration, in which students keep doing grade-level work but get targeted help catching up when they don’t understand something. Instead of going back and redoing everything with students, it’s about “just giving them those little scaffolded pieces, so that they can tackle the grade-level standard lesson,” Totten said. +
++It’s still early, but the results have been encouraging: “From fall to winter we saw really great growth” in student learning, Totten said. And the approach could be a model for other schools now trying to help kids rebound from not one but two school years deeply marked by the pandemic. +
++Ever since schools around the country closed their buildings last spring, educators and families alike have been worried about how the shift online would affect kids’ learning. Early research was concerning: A June 2020 analysis found that the average student could fall seven months behind due to the pandemic, with Latinx students losing nine months and Black students losing 10. More recent studies have been more encouraging, showing students losing ground in math but not in reading. However, researchers are concerned that many students of color and those living in poverty aren’t being captured in the data. +
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Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
++Now, with many schools likely to reopen full time in the fall, districts around the country are facing the challenge of figuring out how much their students have missed and how to address it. Some are planning a remedial approach, even holding students back a grade so they can repeat all the material they missed. But some experts say that approach could actually widen educational inequity by depriving Black, Indigenous, and other students of color of access to grade-level work. What’s more effective, they say, is what Gregory Heights is doing: keeping kids moving forward, even if they need a little help to stay on track. +
++“Our tendency as a system has been to go backward and meet kids where they are,” Bailey Cato Czupryk — vice president of practices, diagnostics, and impact at TNTP, an education nonprofit that advocates for acceleration — told Vox. But “you don’t close the gaps we see in performance by holding a subset of kids back and deciding they don’t get to try grade-level stuff.” +
++We’re just starting to find out how the pandemic has affected kids’ learning +
++When schools moved their classes online in the spring of 2020, teachers and parents had lots of reasons to worry. First were basic issues of access: In a 2019 analysis by the Associated Press, about 17 percent of students nationwide lacked a computer at home, and 18 percent lacked broadband internet access. Low-income families and families of color were especially likely to be without these resources, according to the AP. That meant a significant number of students simply couldn’t attend remote classes, although many school districts sent iPads or laptops to students’ homes in an effort to remedy the problem. +
++Then there were the pressures online learning put on families: Remote lessons often require a parent or other adult to help the student with technology and staying on task, especially at younger ages, and that simply wasn’t possible in many households, whether because parents were working during school hours or because they had limited English fluency or other barriers. Again, low-income families were more likely to face obstacles in helping kids with online school, experts said. +
++On top of these challenges has been the trauma of the pandemic itself, during which millions of people have lost jobs, countless families have fallen into poverty, and nearly 40,000 children have lost a parent to Covid-19. Learning new material under such circumstances has been, for many students, difficult, to say the least. +
++Given all that, recent research on learning during the pandemic is, in some ways, reassuring. In fall 2020, the nonprofit NWEA studied students’ performance on reading and math assessment tests, and compared it to scores for students in the same grades in fall 2019, before the pandemic began. In math, the 2020 students scored about 5 to 10 percentile points lower than the 2019 group — a “moderate” drop, NWEA research head Beth Tarasawa told NPR. But in reading, students this fall scored about the same on average as they did before the pandemic. +
++The group also measured individual students’ performance over time, comparing their test scores in early 2020 with their scores in the fall. “We saw, on average, students showed growth in both math and reading across the grade levels in almost all grades,” Tarasawa told NPR. “Most students made some learning gains in both reading and math since COVID started.” +
++But amid the positive news, the researchers also found something deeply concerning. About a quarter of students never took the assessment tests this fall, meaning they’re not represented in NWEA’s analysis. And those students, the group found, were more likely to be Black, Indigenous, or other people of color, or to attend high-poverty schools — essentially, the groups that experts were already concerned about with regard to remote education. +
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Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
++Some students might not have taken the tests because they lacked internet access, while others may have stopped going to school entirely. Indeed, chronic absenteeism has been a serious problem during the pandemic, with hundreds or even thousands of students missing from classes in some districts. Miami-Dade County public schools, for example, opened with more than 10,000 fewer students than in 2019, according to ABC News. The district sent teams of social workers to locate and help the students, but as of March, about 1,000 remained unaccounted for. +
++“We believe that these were the students who were in crisis prior to the COVID-19 crisis,” Miami-Dade County Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told ABC. “These were probably poor students, probably English language learners, learners who may have had a disability, may have had home insecurity, food insecurity, and may have had a fragile immigration status.” +
++Overall, the missing test scores in the NWEA are yet more evidence of something that’s concerned educators since Covid-19 first hit: It seems to be having the biggest impact on students who already faced inequities at school. +
++“We already knew that Black and brown students weren’t getting the support that they need even before the pandemic,” Kayla Patrick, a senior data and policy analyst at the Education Trust, told Vox. “And then the pandemic made all of that worse.” +
++Some places are responding to the pandemic by holding kids back +
++Now, the question is what schools and districts should do to address the impact of the pandemic on students in ways that shrink those inequalities rather than widening them. +
++Some districts are likely to treat 2020 as something of a lost year, Czupryk told Vox. Those districts basically take the view that “you should take kids back to where they were in spring 2020 and do all the stuff they would have done,” Czupryk said. +
++At the extreme end of that approach would be actually holding kids back a grade. Eighteen states have laws on the books requiring students to repeat third grade if they don’t meet certain literacy standards, Politico reports, most inspired by a Florida law passed in 2002. The latest such law is Tennessee’s, passed in January in an effort to address the pandemic’s impact on learning. +
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Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
++But experts say having students repeat a grade can backfire, pointing to research showing that the practice stigmatizes students, harms their self-esteem, and makes them more likely to drop out of school. In particular, “I don’t want to see retention policies really target Black and brown communities and have only those kids having to repeat a grade,” Patrick said. +
++More broadly, some say there’s a danger in simply assuming that particular kids have lost ground academically because of their race or family income. That’s because if schools overestimate students’ learning loss, they may fail to give them grade-level work, pushing them even further behind, Chase Nordengren, a senior research scientist with NWEA, told Vox. “Assumptions are really a threat to equity, because they limit the kinds of experiences that students have access to.” +
++Even as we acknowledge inequities in access, Nordegren said, it’s important to “understand that every student is different, and when we come back this fall, every student’s individual level of proficiency is going to need to be understood really well.” +
++But experts say the better approach is “acceleration” +
++And for students who have missed out on a lot this year, experts say there’s a better way to help than just making them repeat material. The best approach, they argue, is to keep kids at grade level but give them specific help when they face an obstacle due to something they missed, a process sometimes called targeted remediation or “just in time” learning. +
++At Gregory Heights Elementary, for example, third-graders are learning double-digit multiplication right now. But some of them don’t have their single-digit multiplication facts down yet. Rather than holding them back or putting them in a remedial class, teachers can pull them into small Zoom groups to figure out what their specific challenges are. When teachers worked with one student individually, they found that she actually only had trouble multiplying sixes and sevens. So the question, Totten said, was, “what could we do with sixes and sevens to help her learn those more quickly?” +
++Another student, who has special needs, is still working on being able to spell and handwrite letters. But his grade is working on five-paragraph essays. Rather than keep him from working on essays until his handwriting is perfect, teachers have him use Google Translate to dictate his work into a computer. “He can still look for the organization, like his class is doing, he can still develop his theme, he can still develop his claim,” Totten said. “We know that we still have to work with him on actually writing himself and being able to do the spelling piece, but using a strategy, he’s able to do the work at his grade level.” +
++Gregory Heights started using the approach in September, and so far educators are pleased with the results, at least as measured by assessments students took in fall and winter. Students began returning to school buildings on a hybrid schedule in March, and the district has not yet announced a schedule for the fall. But whatever happens, Gregory Heights plans to continue and refine the acceleration approach, helping teachers identify what skills are the most important to teach in a limited amount of time. “If I’m truly going to accelerate,” Totten asks, “am I going to do every one of these lessons, or am I going to cut out some of these lessons and spend more time on other lessons?” +
++District-wide, the real test of the method may not come until next spring, when Washington students are likely to take their next round of statewide tests (the tests were paused this year due to the pandemic). But previous research by TNTP has found that when students who have fallen behind are given grade-level work along with stronger instruction and higher expectations, they catch up more quickly than those who don’t get grade-level assignments. The group has seen what students “are capable of when we as grown-ups let them try, rather than deciding before they even get up to the plate that they’re not going to get a hit,” Czupryk said. +
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Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
++Districts from Alabama to California are taking such messages to heart and planning an acceleration approach to help their students catch up after the past 18 months, according to the Washington Post. And the Department of Education recommended an acceleration approach to address pandemic learning gaps in a reopening handbook released earlier this month, which also noted that funds from the American Rescue Plan can be used for tutoring or summer school programs to help support acceleration. +
++The increased interest in the approach could help districts address the longstanding inequities that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. For example, in a 2018 report, TNTP found that classes composed predominantly of students from higher-income families spent twice as much time on grade-level work as classes with students from lower-income backgrounds. An emphasis on acceleration could help districts examine what they offer their students and make sure they’re giving every student the opportunity to excel. +
++“It’s not like we had an exceptionally just, equal, or equitable education system before the pandemic,” Czupryk said. “These gaps existed before.” +
++The merits, demerits, and awards chances of each film in a weird year at the Oscars. +
++The most prestigious award at the Oscars is the Best Picture trophy, and every year, between five and 10 movies compete for the prize. What makes the contest interesting is that there aren’t any set rules about what constitutes a “best” picture. It’s just the movie (for better or worse, depending on the year) that Hollywood designates as its standard-bearer. +
++The film that wins represents the American movie industry’s view of its accomplishments in the present and its aspirations for the future. +
++In this strange, strange year — with a pandemic wreaking havoc on the film industry and big questions looming about the future of theaters and streaming — it is perhaps surprising that the eight 2021 Best Picture nominees, on the whole, are pretty great. +
+ ++The most-nominated film overall is about the politics, business, and history of Hollywood — no surprise, since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the professional organization that gives out the Oscars) tends to love movies about movies. Two films center on characters who are struggling to retain part of themselves in the midst of memory loss and hearing loss, respectively. +
++Two more films explore the politics and activism of the late 1960s, one focusing on a court case and one on a state-sanctioned assassination. There’s a biting and satirical revenge thriller in the mix. And finally, two films explore the promise and peril of the American Dream: one about a family of Korean-Americans in 1980s Arkansas, and one set in the contemporary West. +
++In the run-up to the delayed-by-two-months Oscars on April 25, the Vox staff is looking at each of the Best Picture nominees in turn. What makes this film appealing to Academy voters? What makes it emblematic of the year? And should it win? We’ll publish a roundtable discussion for each of the nominees as we approach these most unusual Oscars, in a most unusual year. +
++— Alissa Wilkinson, Vox film critic +
++
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+The Trial of the Chicago 7: Our mixed feelings about the movie and its director Aaron Sorkin, explained +
++The historical courtroom drama seems like a classic Oscar film. And for better or worse, it’s peak Sorkin. Will it win? +
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Niko Tavernise / Netflix
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+Mank: Should the most-nominated film at the Oscars win Best Picture? +
++David Fincher’s complicated movie about Hollywood and the making of Citizen Kane may be the least “popular” of the Best Picture nominees — whatever that means in this weird year — but it’s also the most-nominated film by a long shot. +
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Netflix
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+Promising Young Woman’s explosive ending and Best Picture chances, explained +
++Our critics have wildly differing opinions about Emerald Fennell’s much-discussed darkly comedic revenge thriller starring Carey Mulligan. Will the Oscars? +
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Focus Features
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+Don’t sleep on The Father, one of our favorite Best Picture nominees +
++The film, which stars Anthony Hopkins, is a heartbreakingly brilliant adaptation of an award-winning play about a man and his daughter dealing with his dementia. +
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Sony Pictures Classics
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+On Nomadland, the Oscars, and that Amazon question +
++How the Best Picture nominee depicts grief, gig employment, and the American heartland. +
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Searchlight Pictures
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+Why Best Picture nominee Sound of Metal resonates +
++Great performances and fascinating technical choices power the riveting drama starring Riz Ahmed as a drummer who’s going deaf. +
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Amazon Studios
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+How Best Picture nominee Judas and the Black Messiah questions the meaning of freedom +
++The powerful drama about the assassination of Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton presents moral queries that rhyme with the present. +
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Warner Bros.
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+Minari is America +
++Why we love this Best Picture nominee. +
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Josh Ethan Johnson/A24
++The 2021 Oscars will air live on Sunday, April 25, on ABC. +
++Why we love this Best Picture nominee. +
++Eight films are in the running for Best Picture, the most prestigious award at the Oscars, this year. That’s a lot of movies to watch, analyze, and enjoy. So in the days leading up to the April 25 ceremony, Vox staffers look at each of the nominees in turn. What makes this film appealing to Academy voters? What makes it emblematic of the year? And should it win? +
++Below, Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson, senior culture reporter Alex Abad-Santos, identities reporter Fabiola Cineas, and critic at large Emily VanDerWerff talk about Minari, Lee Isaac Chung’s vibrant family drama about a Korean American family living in the Ozarks in the 1980s. +
++Minari’s specificity is what makes it so appealing +
++Alissa Wilkinson: I first saw Minari in a different world: at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, on a huge screen in an auditorium filled with ecstatic audience members. The filmmakers were there, and the reception was rapturous. I remember just being so happy to watch it. +
++Turns out it’s the only one of the Best Picture nominees I saw on a big screen (boy, it hurts to say that), and I’m delighted the movie’s buzz persisted into awards season and that so many people have found it so incredibly meaningful. +
+ ++There are a lot of entry points to Minari. There’s the experience of immigrants and their children, people of Asian descent in particular. There’s the feeling of what it’s like to grow up in rural America, especially if you’re not white and the dominant community around you is. There’s the oddities and quirks of American religious communities. There’s the battle to maintain a youthful dream and a marriage in difficult times. And a lot more, too. +
++I know all of you found your way into this film from different directions. What spoke to you? +
++Emily VanDerWerff: I love stories that draw you in with their specificity. Minari is “about” a lot of things, if you want to pull back to the thematic level, and it has a ton of elements it’s mixing together in its plot. But two key ingredients that the movie nails are its depiction of running a small family farm and its depiction of rural evangelical Christianity. +
++After watching this movie, I jokingly remarked to Alissa that it was a surprisingly accurate portrayal of agricultural policy in the 1980s. While I don’t think Minari will teach you how to run a farm in the 1980s, it does offer an overview of both the pitfalls and benefits of getting into agriculture at a time when banks were loaning money to small family farmers and the US government was doubling down on farm subsidies, but also at a time when the specter of corporations driving smaller family farms out of business loomed large. What is Jacob’s (Steven Yeun) struggle to find anyone to buy his vegetables about but the way the market suffocated operations like his, slowly but surely? Okay, Jacob’s struggle is about way more than just that. But I appreciated how Minari got its details about farm life in a rural area right without really overstating them. +
++The film takes a similar approach to Christianity. Jacob’s hired hand, Paul (Will Patton), practices a version of Pentecostalism that he seems to have largely invented himself, which involves speaking in tongues, praying over the crops, and hauling a cross down the road every Sunday. Minari’s depiction of Paul’s faith is in addition to how it shows the Yi family joining a nearby church and encountering microaggressions — both well-meaning and not so well-meaning — from its many white congregants. +
++What I like about these details is that the movie doesn’t particularly feel the need to comment on them. Minari succeeds because it stays firmly rooted in the point-of-view of young David (Alan Kim), so when his parents are on the verge of splitting up but ultimately seem to resolve their differences, we understand their story only as much as he does. Yes, as adults we can likely fill in the blanks better than he can, but Minari is careful to never overplay its hand. +
++That approach creates a movie where I remember individual moments and images more than I do the story’s overall sweep, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re meant to think about this movie like we would our own childhoods — as a series of islands of memory, surrounded by vast oceans of what we have forgotten or never really understood in the first place. +
++Also: Shoutout to Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), the best onscreen grandma in ages. +
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Courtesy of A24
++Alex Abad-Santos: There are two very authentic things about how this movie captures growing up Asian American in the ’80s: The first is how Soon-ja does what’s known as the Asian squat, and the second is how the family, like my family, loves its soda pop. Everyone in my family can Asian squat, though my mom absolutely hates the look of it, and growing up, my parents always had soda stocked in the fridge. +
++But beyond the “Oh my gosh, is that a sliver of my life on screen?” moments, I loved how Minari was a story about a family trying to survive. It’s about parents doing what they think is best for their kids; about the life-affirming connections we have with our mothers and grandmothers; the way we will move mountains, maybe even causing friction with our spouses and significant others, for our parents; and how survival is its very own kind of love. +
++One of the scenes seared into my brain happens when Soon-ja arrives and starts pulling all this stuff, stuff you can find only in Korea, out of her suitcase. Her daughter, Monica (Yeri Han), crumbles with joy at the sight of her haul. It’s such a brief scene, but it gets across not only how much Monica misses her mother and her home — everything she gave up to move to America — but also how well Soon-ja knows her daughter, understands how lonely she is, and brings these items to nourish Monica’s soul. +
++And that’s just one moment of countless others. +
++Fabiola Cineas: I can’t stop thinking about little David’s expressions, particularly the moment before he commits the biggest mischief of all — serving Soon-Ja, his grandmother, a teacup of his pee. As soon as the camera focused on his face, allowing us to see his eyes gleeful with malintent, I knew something bad was going to happen. The close shots of David’s face were some of the most authentic moments in this film for me because he perfectly captured what it feels like to be a first-generation immigrant growing up in a country where your parents weren’t born but are fighting to survive. +
++My family came to America in the late 1970s from Haiti, and it’s surreal how much of our story is wrapped up in Minari. Though we didn’t grow up in a rural part of the country, no matter where you are, the immigrant experience is about isolation, pushing your way in, and carving out space for your culture and journey. +
++All of this is to say I saw myself in David, from being suspicious of the “foreign” grandparent who urges you to eat stale treats to grimacing at the fact that your grandparent smells like a faraway land. Other moments: David having to go fetch a stick for a beating (been there!), and being immigrants at a white church. The way Soon-ja watches wrestling — narrating every kick and blow — has inspired me to investigate the connection between immigrant women and wrestling. This is the same way my mother has watched wrestling for decades. It’s something I’ve never been able to understand or explain. I have recorded it on camera, though. +
++I appreciate how Minari didn’t have to force any narratives or include any extreme plot points to draw people into this story about a Korean family trying to make it in America. What’s fascinating is how normal the story is. +
++Minari challenges Hollywood’s attitudes about what is “American” +
++Alissa: Yes! You’re all pointing to something I think conventional Hollywood movies sometimes forget — that movies become more interesting to viewers when they lean into specificity, rather than trying to appeal to a broad audience by being more vague or general. Not every detail of Minari is familiar to every audience, but some details are, and I think that’s what has made it work so well for so many people who’ve seen it. +
++At the same time, it’s undeniably an Asian American story. A lot of conversation about the movie — thanks to the Golden Globes designating it a “foreign language film” — pushes back on ideas about what counts as “American” and what makes something “foreign.” It’s a matter that movies have run into before, even recently (see also The Farewell), and taps into big and very important questions. +
++Minari is a story set in America about people living in America, produced by an American company, written and directed by an American based in part on his own childhood memories. The Oscars won’t file it under the “international” film category for all of those reasons, but there’s still a sense that a movie in which a lot of the dialogue isn’t in English might be seen, by some, as “foreign.” +
++This might be too big a question, but I want to hear what you think: Are we past the point where it’s valuable or even advisable to think about “foreign films” at all? And for you, what category does Minari fit into? How would you characterize the film to someone if you’re encouraging them to see it? +
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Josh Ethan Johnson/A24
++Fabiola: So glad you brought up that Golden Globes controversy, Alissa. Can any of you help me understand why, under the Golden Globes rules, a “foreign language film” can’t compete in the awards’ Best Picture categories? And how did they decide that at least 50 percent of words in English = American? Why not 60 percent, or 80? It all seems so arbitrary and a clear sign that this is just a way to “other” films and filmmakers like Minari and Lee Isaac Chung. Minari is as American as it gets, and so is Chung. It’s past time for these rules to change, to stop forcing (typically) nonwhite filmmakers to go through extra levels of scrutiny just to be judged alongside what this country has deemed the norm — whiteness. +
++Every time a controversy like this happens, people start trying to investigate how American the filmmaker is. In Minari’s case, even though the Oscars have more readily recognized the film as American, I’ve seen people attempt to unnecessarily overexplain how Chung is from Denver or that he went to Yale as a way to make viewers feel comfortable. It shouldn’t matter where he was born or where he went to school. Dear white people: Stop making Asian Americans jump through hoops as a form of repentance for being great. +
++Alex: This gets at my problem with the Oscars. On the one hand, I feel like, who cares what these people think (see Green Book winning Best Picture in 2019) in the grand design of things? These awards shouldn’t be a mark of quality, especially when they reward mediocre movies. +
++On the other hand, if Minari wins, I will be so happy that it got recognized for being the beautiful film that it is. It’ll be a sign of filmic justice: A splendid movie wins for being the best movie of the entire year (which also happened last year with Parasite). And yes, that is a testament to how idiotic the Oscars are and their power over me. +
++I do think a Best International Film category should exist at the Oscars, but only because the Academy can be so myopic in its vision of what “good” movies look like and are (though the organization is trying to fix this by being more inclusive in its membership). I know that increases the potential for siloing international movies, but without an international category, would they get recognized at all? (Like, how does the renowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar only have one Oscar nomination for directing, ever?) +
++I think the entire debacle at the Golden Globes was based on an uncomfortable reality: that Asian and Asian American experiences still aren’t considered American. And I can’t think of a more “American movie” about the proverbial American dream that touches upon American ideas of religion, class, and family than Minari this year. +
++Meanwhile, Glenn Close can do some hilariously horrendous poverty cosplay in Hillbilly Elegy and generate buzz and think pieces about what that movie and book say about “real” America. +
++Emily: It’s fascinating that the stodgy Academy seems to be moving in the right direction on this, recognizing more and more films in a language other than English (and even giving Parasite Best Picture last year) and correctly recognizing that movies like Minari aren’t “foreign films,” since they’re made right here. And as that’s happening, the Golden Globes is moving ever more toward stodginess in this and many other matters. (The Globes, after all, got the Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody awards train running a couple of years ago.) It’s the reverse of what you might have expected even 10 years ago. +
++But I think it’s a telling example of how the Academy has started to think about cinema as a global enterprise — even if the Oscars will probably always think of that enterprise as being centered on the United States — while the Globes are so intent on not seeing past these shores that they can’t even recognize movies made here in a language other than English. In the big picture, this doesn’t really matter, but it is kind of surprising to be a critic saying something akin to, “Well, you gotta hand it to the Oscars!” +
++And the Oscars are right to embrace Minari, not just because it’s great (which it is) but also because its coming-of-age narrative is the sort of thing the Oscars have increasingly embraced as a way to honor all sorts of experiences that they haven’t really centered before this last decade. That everything from Moonlight to Lady Bird to Minari more or less fits the “coming-of-age period piece” genre I’ve just described shows how versatile it is. Growing up, after all, is one of the few things all human beings have to do, and we can find commonality in it even when the specifics might be different. +
++But I also hope the Academy ventures beyond that genre when recognizing stories about communities that have rarely been at the center of “Oscar movie” discourse. Last year’s victory for Parasite — a wildly entertaining thriller that doubles as a critique of capitalism — bodes well in this regard, and I hope the Oscars keep moving in that direction. +
+ Josh Ethan Johnson/A24
++Alissa: Not to toot my own horn, but I did have a great conversation with Walt Hickey, who writes about the awards from a statistics and data perspective, about how the changing makeup of the Academy hit an inflection point this year and starts to explain some of the shifts Emily points to above. +
++Okay. So we all love Minari. If someone else told you they loved Minari, what might you tell them to see, read, or experience as well? Did it bring anything to mind for you? +
++What to watch and read after Minari +
++Alex: I mean, for me there are a lot of parallels with one of my favorite all-time movies, Giant, about Texas, race, society and identity, and James Dean being rude about oil. Minari and Giant are separated by decades and maybe don’t look similar on the surface, but in terms of scope about the promises of American prosperity, the reality of said prosperity, and the future of the American dream, the two films speak the same language and are part of the same legacy. +
++I also kept thinking about the Netflix series Master of None. That show, created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, was about a lot of things from episode to episode, but one of the throughlines were kids realizing their parents’ journeys. For Ansari’s protagonist, Dev Shah, and Shah’s friend, Brian Chang (played by Kelvin Yu), a few episodes focus on their coming to terms with their parents’ immigration to America and what that identity means. +
++Emily: I might recommend Apple TV+’s Little America, a frequently terrific anthology series telling the stories of American immigrants who moved here from all over the world. (I should also point out that Little America is produced by Epic, which, like Vox, is owned by Vox Media.) Another TV series that tackles the immigrant experience, albeit from a wildly different point of view, is FX’s spy drama The Americans. I don’t know that it’s the most natural overlap with Minari, but it’s fantastic, and everybody should find an excuse to watch it. +
++In the world of film, there are a ton of amazing coming-of-age stories that might be enjoyed by Minari fans, but for some reason, I’m drawn to Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, beginning with Pather Panchali. Ray’s films depict a young boy growing up in India amid poverty and other hardships in the early 20th century. Yet they capture a similar sense of the ways the horrors of our childhood are often understood by us as just how life is when we’re kids. Ray’s movies are among my favorites ever made, and if you’re just looking for another movie with kids trying to adjust to tricky living situations, they’d be a great pick. +
++Fabiola: Minari brought a couple of books to mind that I’d definitely recommend to someone looking for more. The first is Chang-rae Lee’s first novel Native Speaker, which is about a Korean American man trying to assimilate in American society. And he’s a spy (a connection to The Americans, Emily!), so there are many layers to the plot. Published a few years later (in the late ’90s) is Mia Tuan’s Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today, which explores Asian identity in America more broadly, and what it means to become a “true” American. +
++For more recent works, I’d point to Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a powerful book about a Korean family that immigrates to Japan just before World War II (which we’ve covered here, here, and here). Lastly, a friend of mine recommended to me the essay collection Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by poet Cathy Park Hong, which explores Asian American consciousness and identity with some cultural criticism mixed in — it’s on my list. +
++Alissa: I love that Alex recommended Giant! I’d also direct people back to the 2019 movie The Farewell, starring Awkwafina. The Farewell is quite different from Minari — it’s about a Chinese family, and it’s set in the present — but has a similar tone and mood, of humor and love and mourning. +
++And I also loved this reflection by writer Alexander Chee following his viewing of Minari. “Lee Isaac Chung said his family got his film mixed up with their own memories,” he writes. “I think a lot of us are having this experience.” And then Chee goes on to write about his own experiences. I was glad to see the movie through his eyes. +
++Minari is playing in theaters and available to digitally rent on platforms including Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and YouTube. It’s also playing in A24’s Screening Room. Find our discussions of the other 2021 Best Picture nominees here. +