A farewell is a gesture to signify when something is over, complete, resolved and settled. There’s a finality to a farewell. However, The Farewell is anything but conclusive about answering the culturally charged ethical question that rests at its core. That’s why I think the Chinese title, 别告诉她, which translates into “Don’t Tell Her,” much more accurately reflects the emotional, cultural, and moral ambiguity present throughout its story. It is a film about the anxiety of existing in the liminal space between the East and the West, a space that thousands of second-generation Asian-American immigrants occupy. Our main character, Billi, is one of these second-generation Asian-Americans based on director Lulu Wang’s own experiences. Like many of us, Billi finds herself fraught with discord and caught in the debate over tradition, engaging through stilted speech and awkward movements throughout the film.
Whereas last year’s Crazy Rich Asians was a celebration of Asians in extravagance, The Farewell’s subdued, melancholic exploration of East Asian culture makes Crazy Rich Asians look almost shallow in comparison. For example, the dumplings wrapped by hand in Crazy Rich Asians are plot devices, merely set pieces to spur the action along and serve as a metaphor for tradition in the battle of wits between Constance Wu’s character and Michelle Yeoh’s character. They could just as well be made of plastic for their purpose in the movie. On the other hand, the 肉饼 (fried pancakes with meat filling) in The Farewell aren’t just there for decoration. They’re cooked and eaten. They fill the frame plainly and honestly atop a modest stove and are allowed to sizzle audibly without any pretense or dialogue. Nothing distracts from the simple focus of home cooking. They are a culinary representation of collective family values. In Crazy Rich Asians, food is just a prop used to illustrate the glamor and wealth of the Young family, but in The Farewell, food is family, and the 肉饼 are just as important as the people eating them.
Interestingly, in a movie where so many characters represent the philosophies of either the East or the West, the character that straddles the gap most often is Nai Nai, bouncing back and forth with her speech and actions. At one moment, she will ask Billi’s mother worriedly if Billi’s father has been drinking again, lamenting that alcohol was a real problem with him in the past. Then at another moment later on, she’ll merrily encourage him to continue carousing with his brother, to revel in the rare opportunity, against the vocal concerns of his wife. In one scene, Nai Nai will urge Billi to find a suitable man, but then immediately admit that it’s also good for a woman to learn to be independent after Billi questions her about about her current partner, Mr. Li. She is both the center of conflict of the narrative, the heart of the family, and the symbol of a cultural happy medium, oscillating between the two sides.
因为生活呀，不光是你去做什么，更是你如何去做 。（Because life is not just about what you do, but more about how you do it.）
— 奶奶 （Nai Nai)
This line was the most memorable for me. I heard the spoken dialogue in Mandarin ringing in my ears as I walked out of the theater, a reaffirmation of a truth I’ve always held dear: that in life, what you say or do is not nearly as important as the way in which you choose to say or do it.
We all love our parents, our grandparents, our families, but it’s the way in which we love our families that really matters. The act of loving is universal but it’s precisely that universality that makes it effectively meaningless; it’s the method of loving that sets each family apart. In the East and the West, those methods are drastically different. One can only surmise which is the better of the two, especially when personal and cultural biases are inescapable, but director Lulu Wang succeeds in showing both sides in the The Farewell and asks, “Is there even such a thing as a ‘better’ method?”
I didn’t enjoy watching The Farewell even though it was a great film. The experience was simply too real, too relatable. We like it when drama is dramatic. It’s exciting when the loud bouts of shouting of a film’s dysfunctional family are given the spotlight, but in reality, dysfunctional families exist mostly in unspoken words and averted eye contact. Explosive emotional arguments are rare, which is why they’re so raw and potent when they occur.
The Farewell depicts this perfectly. Most scenes were filled with apprehension, dripping with palpable anxiety, and lingered on agonizing, uncertain silence and searching stares. There are more moments of heavy silence than there are moments of shouted dialogue and intense camera movements. Levity is found few and far between and would only rise to the surface for a fleeting moment before sinking back slowly into the film’s central farce. As an American-born Chinese millennial who speaks fluent Mandarin with a passably native accent, I immediately noticed how terrible Awkwafina’s Mandarin was and how laborious it sounded, but I believe even that was a carefully considered and deliberate element of the film. It was a bit jarring at first, but it works thematically that Billi is someone who looks like her extended family in China but doesn’t sound like them. That disconnect is a feeling I think almost all Asian-Americans resonate with. She doesn’t mimic their mannerisms nor does she share their philosophies, but she tries hard to play by their rules and to sound like them, and that effort, that exertion, is reflected in her speech.
It’s a strangely paced film that doesn’t feel like it strictly adheres to the traditional three act structure. A common complaint of The Farewell is that its plot doesn’t really go anywhere, but I don’t think the intention of director Lulu Wang necessitates an eventful plot. Like Nai Nai says about life, the focus isn’t on what happens but rather on how it happens, on how the people involved react and behave to each other, something The Farewell never lets go of. A tenuous love is the thread that runs through The Farewell from start to finish, from East to West, and from generation to generation. It winds through all of the complex emotions and cultural conflicts of the morality of mortality with vulnerability and sincerity.
The Farewell ultimately arrives at no definitive answer or clear winner to the central question it presents, and as unsatisfying as that might feel for the viewer at the end of its 1 hour and 38 minute runtime, it succeeds at exactly what it aims to do: exploring the conflict of cultural identity within Asian-Americans and asking you to answer it for yourself.
It’s a thinker, hopefully the first of many of its kind to come for Asian-Americans and the universal immigrant experience. You should go see it, because we’ve all lived it.
