4 Stars — Insightful
Most cultures agree with what is right and what is wrong when addressing ultimate decisions: We don’t kill others, we don’t lie to them, we honor parents, we aren’t unfaithful to our spouse, we don’t steal. However, in the lesser things such as those behaviors that guide relationships, such as whether to tell your sister, mother or grandmother that she is dying of a terminal disease, different cultures often answer in different or even opposite ways. This truth is explored in Lulu Wang’s award-winning film The Farewell.
Similar to Crazy Rich Asians that exposed the Western world to a culturally rich snapshot of wealth in an Asian family, Wang’s film opens our hearts to the familial compassion that the threat of death brings to a Chinese family. As both writer and director, Wang is as much our teacher as she is our storyteller.
The ensemble cast members asked to portray this journey are wonderful. Showing both the normal machinations of any family with the sibling and in-law rivalries, they also masterfully show the struggle of a young Chinese woman who moved to New York when she was 5 and is now being reimmersed into her birth culture.
Having spent most of her 30-year life in the Western world’s emphasis on the individual, she now experiences the Eastern world’s primacy of the family or society. The lessons that she learns enrich both her understanding of herself and a deep appreciation of her family and birth culture.
The two primary characters are the cancer-ridden grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) and her demonstrative, moody granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina). In daily contact through her cellphone, Billi is deeply connected to her grandmother and wants to have an authentic farewell as it would be done in her adopted New York. However, Nai Nai’s sister, two sons, cousin and niece have all agreed not to tell Nai Nai that she has only three months to live. Instead, they decide that Billi’s cousin should stage a wedding so they all will have an excuse to come to China and be together. It is this decision that causes much of the humor and wisdom of the film.
Part of the difficulty of living in our global community is that we are often captive to our own limited perspective. Individualistic, anxiety and social cultures often approach very important decisions of identity and morality with a myopic vision that leaves little room for understanding, let alone appreciation of differences in the other two. These cultural silos then segregate us into tribal groups that not only have little empathy for those in the other tribes but can quickly dehumanize the others and quickly digress into violent responses. Films such as this can begin to bridge that gap and give opportunity for differences to be explored in a safe and honoring manner.
As an immigrant from China to the United States when she was 6 years of age, Wang’s own journey creates the foundation for her writing and directing. Similar to Billi, Wang had to discover her own way in an individualistic world, and though she learned the piano as a child, she eventually earned a degree in both music and literature. But as the film clearly shows, she is a bicultural person who creates insightful dialogue for her characters as they walk through the valley of the shadows with one foot in each culture.
We recommend that we all take this journey with her so that we may laugh and cry and understand and honor these beautiful people with whom we share the global community.
Discussion
» The struggle of a family to find their way during grief is often seen in the exaggerated responses of love and anger, competition and compassion. How has your family navigated death and grief? What was your part in that experience?
» As you explore both ways to deal with death, do you think it would have been better to tell Nai Nai she is dying so she can state her own farewell, or would it have been better for the family to bear the emotional weight for her as was decided by this family?
» Leonard Cohen wrote the beautiful hymn that is sung at the climax of the film. Consider his message: Leonard Cohen — “Come Healing” (music video with lyrics).
— Cinema in Focus is a social and spiritual movie commentary. Hal Conklin is a former mayor of Santa Barbara and Denny Wayman is the retired pastor of Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara and lead superintendent of Free Methodist Church in Southern California. For more reviews, visit www.cinemainfocus.com, or follow them on Twitter: @CinemaInFocus. The opinions expressed are their own.