Writer's Block Magazine

by Mundi Cox

“There are three rules for walking through the woods,” Minari’s character told his son, almost whispering. “The first is that survival is not guaranteed, everything is contingent.”

The film was one that I came across often at one point, in every film menu of every hotel room I stayed in. After avoiding it for long enough I finally watched it one evening, mostly out of intrigue for the title: ‘Winter Kill’. It follows Minari, in his youthful glory, as his character raises his young son in an eternally snow-covered town at the foot of a mountain. He teaches his son to hunt as they track down a black bear that has wandered too close to the town’s surrounding area.

Winter Kill had stayed with me, not only for of its jarring ending, which I will not give away, nor for the three rules of survival that the son receives, the second one being to keep an eye out for the quiet ones; its true impact lay in Minari’s performance. His ability to inspire intrigue through a single earnest expression that left you with more questions than answers, never feeling the need to act on the impulses he whet in others.

After a highly-publicised scandal surrounding the actor’s involvement with nefarious dealings, I came across the film less and less in my travels, and before long, not at all. It was not until years later that I was reminded of it through sheer coincidence.

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After years of never-ending travelling, airport lounges had become a sort of refuge for me. Hotel rooms had turned into nothing more than confinements that all seemed to share the same interior decorator. Lounges, on the other hand, offered a community for us impermanent travellers. We were like constantly migrating birds, replenishing at a stopover site before taking off to the next destination. We could always identify our own species, each of us seeming too comfortable in the transient lives we led.

One rainy afternoon at the Antalya Airport, after having been buried in a copy of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, I looked up and saw him sat on the small maroon couch across me: Minari. The years had passed for him. His dark locks of hair had been reduced to a grey comb over, his sharp cheekbones weighed down by gravity, and his eyes consumed with the weight of better-days-past. He was yesterday’s icon.

It was clear from how much he was dragging with him that he was not of our species. I can still recall the constant glances shot in his direction by everyone from the young bartender to the small congregation of businessmen with their blazers resting on their laps. It was like a rhino had wandered into a sanctuary for hummingbirds. I tried to avoid glancing in his direction by continuing with my novel but found myself simply observing the Anglophone marks on the paper.

A scene from Winter Kill was instantly dredged up in my mind, one that fascinated me when I first saw it. Minari’s character poses for a photo for the local paper, his gun resting on the icy carcass, his expression falsely prideful yet deeply sombre. His son confidently touches the nose of the brute, feeling certain that he would never die with his father was by his side.

Minari’s character in the scene had left me with questions that I had convinced myself only Minari himself would be able to answer. I determinedly raised my eyes but found him staring out the window with a keen concentration. As though performing a scene, he sat there completely unbothered by the turning of heads and not-so-silent whispers about him floating around the room. Instead, he seemed to focused all his attention on what he deemed to be important at the moment, after all, he had reached that age where the opinions of all others seize to be of much importance.  

I turned to see what had drawn his attention. At the window was a magpie, black all over with a white abdomen and midnight blue wings. To its back were planes taking off and landing amidst the growing rainfall. Statuesque, it stood completely still as it looked inside, at Minari himself. Like former acquaintances from years past, they looked at each other with a kind of familiarity, as though speaking only through their eyes. After a brief moment the bird leapt away and flew into the grey skies, in total defiance of the worsening conditions.

Minari, upon seeing this, gained a sudden alert composure as if awoken from a dream. Before I could even recall what it was I intended on asking him, he had gathered himself and his belongings. I watched as he walked away, silent stares following him all the way out, each filled with ounces of judgement. The shame of his past misdeeds was hang around him like a tag wrapped tightly around his neck; yet his walk was solemn with conviction.

There he went: the same man that had been disgraced by personal revelations, the same man that was once mentioned as a source of inspiration by young actors discussing their craft, the same man that had once captivated me with his stoic performance. He had all the world on his side, once, but was now pried open for us all to see.

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I turned to the pellucid window once more but struggled to peer past my own reflection. Around me the silence had grown deafening and all motion had seemed to seize for but a brief moment. I was reminded of the final rule Minari’s character had given his son.

“The trail is full of things unknown, and at times, just the wind in your back will be enough to make you want to turn and head back,” he said. Then a moment later, he added:”But keep moving forward; attend to everything that comes your way with open eyes. Always.”

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