The Farewell

The Farewell is a bittersweet Chinese tragicomedy that has the potential to become an Academy Award winner for Best International Feature Film. The movie revolves around an elderly Chinese lady who suffers from an incurable cancer. Her sister however hides this information from her and instead tries to bring all the family together for one last time. A hastily arranged wedding between a grandson and his Japanese girlfriend serves as purpose for the family members abroad to come back to Changchun. However, the burden of this lie is heavy and conflicts, confusion and misunderstandings soon occur.

The most interesting question about this movie is how you would deal with a situation such as the one portrayed in this film if someone close to you were concerned and how you would like to be treated if you were in a similar situation yourself. The family members in this film try to carry the burden together and decide to not tell the aged grandmother that she is dying. There is no right way to deal with such a difficult decision. If you hide the truth, you might prevent the other person to live every day as if it were the last day and to say farewell. If you tell the truth, you will cause an immense emotional burden to the concerned person who will live in fear of dying every single day. The Farewell offers much food for thought and also shows how differently Western and Eastern cultures approach such a scenario.

The acting performances in this film are outstanding. Every character has its own identity from the drunk war veteran who was in love with the elderly lady over the chubby grandchild who is addicted to technology to the deaf housemate who is the only one to mind his own business. Lead actress Nora Lum convinces as concerned granddaughter who disagrees with her family's strategy of hiding the truth from her grandmother and who also has some financial and social problems of her own. Shuzhen Zhao steals the show in her very first movie as headstrong elderly lady with a heart of gold.

The movie portrays the differences between Western and Eastern cultures cleverly and also portrays how the Chinese society is changing. People have become greedy capitalists looking for financial opportunities abroad but also try to embrace their ethnic heritage at the same time. Changchun has developed from a rather small city with less than a million citizens to a gigantic city with close to eight million citizens in only fifty years. The movie shows how gigantic buildings and monuments have replaced small houses and gardens.

The Farewell also has alight-hearted side and manages to cheer its audience up despite numerous heartbreaking moments. The subtle humour works very well and includes drunk war veterans declaring their romantic feelings, hilarious karaoke performances during the wedding and several running jokes in form of the careless deaf housemate and the disconnected overweight grandson.

In the end, The Farewell is an emotional tragicomedy with a profound message: to spend as much time with your loved ones as you can while you can. As someone who is living abroad and far away from his family, I can truly empathize with the movie's meaningful message. Give this movie the chance to inspire your brain and warm your heart.

The Farewell is such a great film. It opened my eyes to a very thought provoking element of Chinese culture and was full of poignancy, humour, and heart.

We follow a family grappling with grief and the way that the film deals with this is so unique and engaging. All of the characters had a part to play in contributing to the story and adding to the film, but the central relationship is between Awkwafina's Billi and her grandmother. It's a very human, believable, and relatable relationship which drives the film and injects so much heart and emotion. It was beautiful to watch.

The screenplay is quite minimal, with not a huge amount of dialogue, but it doesn't need it. It manages to convey its meaning and purpose through other mediums, and is highly accomplished in this way.

I also loved the direction and cinematography of The Farewell. It felt very clean, very arty, and was just great to look at.

A very powerful film exploring familial love and grief in a sensitive, unique, and tender way.

Billi Wang (Akwafina) is a young aspiring writer in New York whose family had immigrated from China when she was six years old. She maintains a happy telephone relationship with her paternal grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) who still lives in China in the city of Changchun. Billi's family has received news from another relative that Nai Nai is dying of lung cancer. The extended families travel to Changchun to celebrate the wedding of Billi's cousin although the collective intention is really to say goodbye to Nai Nai - while withholding the news from her that she is dying.

Throughout the film - and especially by the end, it is very clear that is biographical and based on the experiences of the film's talented writer/director Lulu Wang. The story is rich for various reasons including its unique take on the universal theme of dealing with the impending death of a beloved elderly relative.

Billi is also a stand-in for many "new world" North Americans who would find it terribly wrong to withhold from anyone the fact that they are dying. Her points are well expressed but so are the contradictory replies from her elders and those more in line with a Chinese cultural tradition of such secrecy. The reply to the question "who's right" is answered in Nai Nai's laid-back, content demeanour (when not coughing), totally oblivious to her diagnosis. This is one of the fascinating surprises of "The Farewell" in its acquiescence to old-world values in subtle ways. Here, Wang must be given credit for her humility. She seems to have nodded to a sarcastic quote attributed to Oscar Wilde: "I am not young enough to know everything".

The main story is powerful enough; yet Wang adds to the wealth by delving into the immigration experience - for those who left their homeland as well as those left behind. Here again, she takes on a universal theme. In conversations and monologues, the viewer hears what it is like to lose all of one's children (two sons in this case) as they leave the homeland (Nai Nai's other son emigrated to Japan). Billi also has a powerful monologue of what it was like to leave behind an extended family and community when she was six. While intelligently avoiding platitudes, the film asks: is there really a 'better life' somewhere else?

The fine cast does justice to Wang's eloquent story. Awkwafina fits well in the lead role and Zhao's Nai Nai is so loveable that she makes it very easy to see why so many would grieve her impending death. One particular scene stands out even though it is brief: Billi's mother (Diana Lin) quietly avoiding eye contact in a taxi while fighting back tears. In less than a minute, Lin conveys an experience of every adult at least once in our lives. - dbamateurcritic

RATING: 9 out of 10

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Screenplay by Lulu Wang

Billi (Awkwafina) is a 30 year old pianist in New York City. She's struggling after being rejected for a scholarship. She and her parents moved to America when she was young. She is mostly Americanized. News come that her grandmother is dying of cancer. Her family agrees to go the traditional route of hiding the diagnosis from the dying grandma. They are going home to China to fake a wedding celebration. Billi is reluctant to go with the lie.

This is a great cultural story. It's the Chinese culture but also the influence of Western culture. It's a family story. It's also Awkwafina's best acting performance yet. Her inner conflict and her family conflict are both very compelling. There are funny little insights. It's a very touching film. I would modify the ending a little. Looking back at Nai Nai as they drive away is such a powerful scene. The movie should probably end there. The scream is not a good way to end especially with the text reveal in the closing credits. If they want to go back to Billi for the ending, it should be something more positive considering what Nai Nai tells her during the banquet.

I don't really know how I can describe the feeling I felt at the end of the movie. It is heartbreaking especially one of the later shots but you kind of feel like you need more resolution or more of an end.

And I know films don't always need a clear cut beginning and end but I just felt like the characters didn't really grow or change. Like I felt we ended exactly where we started the film. Like nothing changed.

One more negative thing was the tone seemed a bit all over the shop. Very sad scenes would play out and then it would drop the dramatic effect for comedy and it just didn't seem to flow very well into each other. And some sequences just seemed like they belonged in entirely different movies like The Hangover or something. It was kind of strange.

I actually enjoyed this movie believe it or not. You could tell it was lovingly made and was so personal. Awkwafina was great and so was Shuzhen Zhao. The films was best when them two were sharing scenes together. They made you feel how much the characters cared for each other.

The score was also quite haunting. It fit the sombreness of the movie.

So I would say you could watch it but you need to be in the right mood as it can get pretty sad.