The‌ ‌Farewell‌ ‌Review‌

By Ravi Ahuja

The difficult tightrope walk of maintaining your cultural identity in a strange land is one that every immigrant is familiar with. Often, they are ostracized for being different in their new home, only to go back to their motherland and be viewed as a foreigner in their own country. Culture is more than the food we eat and the clothes we wear, it is even more pervasive than the language we speak, it is the very way we view the world and our place in it. This is the struggle that Chinese-American Billi (Awkwafina) finds herself in when she discovers that her dear grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shu-zhen) is dying of terminal cancer. Given a prognosis of only 3 months to live, Billi’s family in America returns to China to spend time with Nai Nai before she passes. In keeping with Chinese custom, however, Nai Nai has no idea that she is ill, as the rest of the family hides her test results and status from her. 
Director Lulu Wang chooses to take what could have been a forgettable Adam Sandler-type goofball comedy in a more dramatic route, using dark comedy in unexpected and subtle ways. This story feels all the more emotional and real because it is; Wang wrote this story based on her own experience of having to lie to her grandmother about cancer. Although her grandmother eventually recovered, she never even knew about the seriousness of her illness or the secret kept from her until The Farewell came out. 

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This movie is more than just interested in the idea of cultural identity, it is all about it. Billi serves as the stand-in American, asking the questions and saying the things that most westerners would. Isn’t it wrong to not tell Nai Nai that she’s dying? What if she wants to say goodbye? How do we have the right to hide something so important from her? The movie never says that she’s right or wrong for thinking this way, but expresses the eastern perspective from the rest of her family, allowing the audience to choose for themselves what they think. As Billi’s uncle puts it, “in the east, a person’s life is a part of a whole”. Nai Nai herself chose to do the same as her family is now doing when her own mother had a terminal illness. In something of a meta moment Billi is interrogated about living in America compared to China and is repeatedly asked which is better, to which she can only answer “they’re just different”. 

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Actor Awkwafina shines in the main role of Billi, perfectly capturing the repressed emotionality that she cannot show, else Nai Nai will discover something’s wrong. Her on-screen chemistry with Zhao Shu-zhen is also terrific, with their relationship being full of joy and love. Nai Nai’s joy and zest for life draws a very sharp contrast with Billi’s near mourning, and it makes her secret illness all the sadder.
The film is also visually beautiful, with a palette of mostly earth tones and muted pastel colors, although there are also some scenes with much richer and more vibrant colors.  Most scenes also try to play around a dual-color scheme, usually some form of blue and brown, which adds a sense of balance in a very aesthetically pleasing way. The camera is almost always static with relatively long takes, allowing the characters to have conversations and exist around each other without being edited together. The relationships all feel more real due to this choice, the positive emotions being drawn out as well as the negative, the awkward, the sad. 
Although not Wang’s directorial debut, with her first film Posthumous coming out in 2014, this is easily the film that has skyrocketed her to the mainstream, and deservedly so. The intensely emotional and personal angle this movie takes is only bolstered by its dark and ironic comedy, and I can’t recommend it enough.
The Farewell is now streaming for free on Amazon Prime.