The Farewell Review

Here's a movie that's been getting a lot of buzz in the last few weeks. After a successful showing at Sundance this year, A24 purchased the rights to the film for $7 million, beating out the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Fox Searchlight. A24 released the film in four theaters on July 12 to the tune of $355,662, pulling off the highest per theater average for any film this year so far at $88,916 per theater. Since then, they've been very smartly playing the slow roll out game, feeding off of great reviews and positive buzz to continually build the hype while only adding a small number of new theaters each week instead of impatiently expanding out too quickly. The strategy has worked out quite well so far as the movie has already made over $10 million and it hasn't even hit 1,000 theaters yet, meaning its run is far from over, especially if it ends up with awards buzz in the fall. While I certainly respect this release strategy, as it's often the best way to get the most money possible with a smaller film, it's also driven me crazy this past month. I really wanted to go see it, yet it wouldn't expand far enough to hit my local theater. When it finally did this past weekend, I immediately beamed and made plans. It was as if a new Marvel film had hit theaters. This type of small film is my thing!

What I find most fascinating about this film is the premise. It's a very unique and personal film to director Lulu Wang as it's based on the story of her grandmother. While the actual story and characters are a work of fiction, it's the events in the film that mirror what actually happened with the director's family. Out of context, the statement "based on an actual lie" might sound amusing. It got a few chuckles out of my audience when I saw it, but in context I didn't know this type of thing happened. What I mean by all this is that the movie surrounds an older lady who gets diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. According to the doctors, she only has a few months to live. However, the family decides not to tell her this and so even the doctors lie to her and say that everything is fine. They even go as far as creating fake medical reports so that she's convinced she's fine. Now I'm the last one to talk to when it comes to Chinese culture, but the movie claimed that this is a fairly common occurrence in China. While there's a lot of motivations behind this, one that stuck out to me is that if a person knows they are going to die, that might speed up the process. If they think they are just fine, they might actually live longer. That's a rather fascinating concept that I hadn't thought of.

The drama in the movie comes with how each of the individual family members deals with this decision. In order to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother, a fake wedding is planned, giving them all an excuse to gather together for one final family outing. Nai Nai, as they call her (that's Mandarin for grandmother, I believe), thinks they are all celebrating a wedding and she is very excitedly working out all the plans. Everyone around her is doing their best to fake excitement, with various levels of success. Perhaps not doing the best at this is Nai Nai's granddaughter Billi, played by Awkwafina. Billi moved with her parents to America when she was young and thus is probably more familiar with American culture than Chinese culture. At the least, she's extremely confused as to why this all is happening as she thinks they should tell Nai Nai the truth so that they can say a proper goodbye. But nevertheless, she flies out from New York and maintains this lie, but acts in an understandably depressed fashion as she has a great relationship with Nai Nai and would rather say a proper goodbye than pretend nothing is wrong. All of this leads to a lot of awkward moments and subdued drama until each of the characters takes turn breaking down in their individual ways.

The definite star of this movie is Awkwafina. She was in smaller movie and TV roles prior to 2018. In fact, she began her career as a rapper and even has a couple of albums out. But 2018, specifically in the summer, was when the movie gods decided to make her a thing. She had breakout roles in "Ocean's 8" and "Crazy Rich Asians," the latter of which personally caught my attention as she was hilarious. At around the same time, in June 2018, this movie was being filmed. I'd say that's a great summer. And now she's showing up all over the place, including in Netflix's "The Dark Crystal" later this month and "The Angry Birds Movie 2" in a few days, as well as "Jumanji: The Next Level" at the end of the year. At San Diego Comic Con this year, she was also announced as a cast member in Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," coming February 2021. So yeah, everyone should know Awkwafina's name before too long, if you haven't already. And "The Farewell" showcases her as an actress who is more than capable of carrying a lead dramatic performance instead of just being the comedic side character. If this performance doesn't give awards consideration when awards season rolls around, I imagine she'll at least have everyone's attention, which should lead to even more dramatic performances from her.

Because, yeah, Awkwafina really sold this. I felt the emotion from her in multiple forms. When she's with Nai Nai and has to join in on this lie, you can just tell from the look on her face that she's struggling. When Nai Nai calls her out on this, wondering why she's not looking happier, she's not really sure how to respond and either gives the most obvious white lie of "I'm fine" or has to play along with Nai Nai's theory of her suffering from jet lag. But not only can you tell that she's extremely sad, but you can also feel the anger building up inside her towards everyone else who won't let her properly say goodbye to Nai Nai. When she's not around Nai Nai, that emotion becomes unleashed in several different sequences that would be perfect for her Oscar video if she can somehow get an Oscar nomination, like getting mad at her parents when they are alone or talking openly and bluntly with the doctor when she realizes said doctor speaks English. Finally, there's moments where she finally gets to spend some one-on-one time with Nai Nai and that's just heartbreaking, especially when Nai Nai talks about how she wants to give her an even bigger wedding feast or when they have to say goodbye and Nai Nai is sure they'll see each other again, but Billi doesn't think they will.

It's these types of moments in the film that not only make you want to break down and cry because of how strong the on-screen bond is between the two of them in the movie, but it's also the type of film that will spark a lot of personal reflection, especially if you've had a grandparent pass away. For me, all of my grandparents have passed away. Two of them passed away either before I was born or before I could remember, but I did have a great relationship with my grandpa who passed away just a few years back. I remember our final moments together quite well, which is a memory I will always cherish. I feel there's often a special bond between a grandparent and a grandchild that is quite unique. While relationships and siblings can have a lot of highs and lows, more often than not the relationship with a grandparent consists of mostly highs as their can be a lot less baggage and very little negative energy. While I don't feel I'm doing justice to this type of relationship with words, the movie captures it perfectly, which makes this a special film that gives off a unique energy that we haven't seen much of, while also teaching me about a certain part of Chinese culture that I wasn't aware of. Thus it was not just an emotional piece, but it also felt very educational.

I do have to apologize for being a dumb American at this point, but there's a lot of other Chinese actors in this movie whose character names just didn't stick in my brain, nor does looking through a cast listing help me much. That said, there's a lot of them who did an excellent job of providing the movie with a lot of layers. This is not just a movie about Awkwafina's character and her Nai Nai. All of the family members have their own story that weaves into this. They might be mostly supporting characters, but they add a depth to this story that helps it stand. We have Tzi Ma and Diana Lin as Billi's parents, Lu Hong as Nai Nai's younger sister, Jiang Yongbo as Billi's uncle, and Chen Han as another grandchild. All of them have a different relationship with Nai Nai and they have their own way of dealing with this situation, which made this feel even more real. One of my favorite moments of the movie was when the uncle was up giving his congratulations speech at the fake wedding, but he couldn't help himself and broke down in tears as he talked about how much his mother has meant to him. She didn't understand what was going on, but he had to get his feelings out. Then we had other characters who were more closed up, which added to the tension of the situation.

Finally, this movie was another great showcase that you don't need a $200 million budget to make your film look nice. You just need talented people who know how to do their job. In fact, I often have a lot of respect for independent films because there was no guarantee during the production of this film that this was going to make any money. The team of filmmakers had a story to tell and they wanted to do their best to properly tell it. Director Lulu Wang has only done one previous feature-length film and that's a German film called "Posthumous" that doesn't appear to even have had an American release. She doesn't know if this is going to be successful. She just wants to tell her story and so there's an extra level of care from her as a director as well as all the crew around her to make sure they do their job perfectly. Oftentimes you can tell the difference between a movie like this and a big blockbuster film where in the latter, the filmmakers know they are making a movie that is going to make a ton of money, so they sometimes are going through the motions. Not the case here. I could tell that everyone on board wanted to make this movie look as good as possible, thus there was a lot of care and precision put into technical craft of the film.

To that last point, this is the moment where I could act like a film student who is required to talk about the cinematography, sound design, editing and all of that fun stuff. I won't go into all of that simply because I've already gone on for a long time with this review and I worry that reviews that are too long won't get read. But I noticed it. There were a lot of basic, everyday stuff that was being filmed, like eating dinner. But instead of being boring, there was a lot of great work with the camera design, editing and the likes that made simple scenes rather engaging. When I started noticing things like that, I purposely paid attention and it was a rewarding experience. The movie also made me really hungry because a central focus in just about any culture when there's a large family gathering where something is being celebrated is the food. And there's a lot of food that's being eaten in this movie. One thing I do know about Chinese culture is that they do a great job with their food. So combine good looking food with great technical work in the movie where food is a big focus and I was ready to go to a Chinese buffet of sorts right after leaving the theater. The only reason why I didn't at least go somewhere afterwards is that I had plans shortly after my movie ended.

I hear a lot of complaints from people being tired of so many sequels and remakes these days. People think Hollywood has run out of ideas and thus there's no more original films. However, I disagree. There's a lot of original films these days. And it's in the independent realm that they come from. Yet they rarely get attention in the mainstream because the same people complaining about no original films are the same people that refuse to see original films because it's not part of a franchise they are familiar with, which is why we get so many sequels and remakes because Hollywood is a business and that's what people pay for. People complain at how shameless Disney is, but yet Disney is about to get their sixth $1 billion film in 2019. And "Frozen 2" and "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" haven't even come out yet. Because people complain about sequels and remakes, yet that's all they choose to see. If you think I'm being unfair with this statement, it's time to now put your money where your mouth is and go see "The Farewell." It deserves your money. It's not just a rewarding, emotional experience in the moment, but it's a movie that's going to stick with me for a long time because I left feeling educated. Because of all this, I'm giving "The Farewell" a 9/10.