There’s a mournful dirge that pervades The Farewell; organ music, grim cinematography, an air of melancholy. Experiencing the movie often feels like attending a wake, or at the very least anxiously awaiting some bad news -which is explicitly what the movie is about. Written and directed by Lulu Wang and inspired by her true story, it depicts the tender relationship between a Chinese-American girl, Billi (Awkwafina) and her Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) in Changchun, as well as the rest of their family returned home in light of a terminal cancer diagnosis that tradition forbids them from telling her about. It’s at times funny, insightful, and emotional, but mostly bittersweet, and quite brilliantly so.
Wang’s direction and screenplay achieve such a perfect symphony of these things through a number of simple yet nuanced choices. Her bleak, almost foreboding atmosphere allows you to feel the sense of grief; imposing roads and hospitals and apartment blocks, an emphasis often placed on the grey and smoggy China sky. And of course there’s the family -straight faced and stony about the impending tragedy. The excuse to get the family together after decades is the wedding of Hao Hao (Chen Han), Billi’s cousin in Japan, to his girlfriend of only three months Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) -a thread of noticeable awkwardness and curiosity the film doesn’t dive into nearly enough. Yet it provides the cover of something joyous and happy under which everyone must hide their sorrow. This isn’t an issue for most of her family, but Billi is too American to conceal her emotions or even want to. And she can’t stand keeping such a giant secret.
But the highly unusual custom driving the plot, as unbelievable, even unethical as it may seem, is even-handedly considered. Wang knows the meaning and importance of this tradition, giving it an apt defence, courtesy of Billi’s uncle Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) who explains it as a part of the philosophy of Chinese collectivism, an alien concept to the western individualism Billi has grown up with. Indeed The Farewell, while not advocating such a ritual, asks us to consider our cultural perceptions and whether Billi is right to oppose it as vehemently as she does. Her values aren’t the same as her familys’. Cultural and national identity is a huge part of the film -both Haibin and Billi’s father Haiyan (Tzi Ma), Nai Nai’s two sons, have lived with their families for decades outside of China and have divergent opinions on their cultural identity subtextually based on how they’ve been received. Billi, as a millennial New Yorker , has extremely cynical opinions on the U.S. in contrast to her parents’ optimistic appreciation for it, yet is still a product of its idealism and cultural ethics. And being caught between two worlds, forced to keep her feelings repressed, and unable to rationally accept why they must be, her ethnic and national identities are in constant conflict.
This is an incredibly interesting thing to grapple with, and captivating to convey, both for audiences who’ve been through similar situations of cultural flux, and those of us who haven’t had to. It’s exceptionally striking too, because Awkwafina is tremendous, outpouring a quality of performance and depth of sincerity I’d have not thought her capable of given my lukewarm impressions of her in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians. Her eclectic sense of humour is still a part of her character, but it’s paired with a mesmerizing pathos, a pang of despair beneath the surface that can be felt in every scene. And it isn’t purely for Nai Nai either -both Wang and Awkwafina are aware of the multitude of hollowing feelings around loss that are tied to nostalgia, home, missed opportunities, uncertainty, and regret. Anyone who’s had a figure like Nai Nai in their lives will understand and empathize.
Because Nai Nai represents both an extremely broad idea of a grandmother and a very specific one; though I’d rather not spoil the delightful characterizations of how. Suffice it to say her relationship with Billi is almost unfairly sweet. While the family relationships across the board are strong, relatable, and well-performed (with Billi’s apathetic closeness to her parents being particularly poignant), the grandmother-granddaughter bond is the films’ exquisite heart. Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen have a natural chemistry, their scenes together being both the films’ most wrenching and joyful. It’s Shuzhen’s only acting credit, but she is a tremendous find, effortlessly loveable and familiar. You never feel she’s playing the fool, despite the deceptiveness around her, and she has a radiantly sharp, generous, and touching personality.
The Farewell as its’ title implies is about goodbyes -there’s a heartbreaking moment where Billi unloads on her mother (an amazing Diana Lin) her resentment for having previously been kept in the dark about her late Yeh Yeh (her grandfather), and having been thus denied the chance to say goodbye. In coming to Changchun, she’s gotten that opportunity with Nai Nai, as has the rest of her family. But unlike say, the climax of Snoopy Come Home, the sadness this situation invites for the movie isn’t just an indulgence of grief for its own sake. This is the sadness of Ikiru, of Harold and Maude, a sadness filled intensely with love and compassion and ultimately wisdom. And like those classics, The Farewell is an abundantly humanist story. It resonates so well on its believable family dynamics, its small bursts of humour, its warmth in the theme of the shared burden and the tragic ignorance alike, its universalism, and its unapologetic cultural expressionism; and it’s the best of its kind since Shoplifters. An essential film of 2019!
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