I thought it would be funny to start the school year off with me reviewing a movie called The Farewell, so hello all and here is The Farewell.
The Farewell is a movie directed, written and produced by Lulu Wang. The story follows a girl named “Billi,” portrayed by Awkwafina, and her family as they discover their grandmother is dying of lung cancer. According to their Chinese customs, the family witholds this information from their grandmother, and no one in the family is allowed to tell the grandmother the news. The family meets up in China to spend time with her as a family for what may be the last time.
From the beginning, the story feels like a very personal one for Wang, even without the knowledge that the story is based on her own life experiences. And no where else is this personal connection shown than in the directing. The way Wang directs in the first act really allows the audience to understand what the main character is going through due to the creative ways the scenes are shot and the overall compositions of the scenes. For the most part, this direction carries on into the rest of the movie.
The rest of the movie, however, is not as good. The premise of the movie is very solid. There are definitely story pieces to explore within the setup, but the movie does not dive much deeper than it’s premise. After the first act of the movie, most of the conversations between characters can be boiled down to three repeating statements: “We should tell her!” “Should we tell her?” “No, we shouldn’t tell her.” The cultural reason for why they don’t tell the grandmother isn’t even brought up until more than halfway through the movie. The cultural tension between the different family members is not developed very well outside of one dinner conversation. The conversations feel as though they don’t go any deeper than this: “Well, America does this. But, China does this,” and so on. This back and forth storytelling leaves the movie feeling one-note.
Speaking of one-note, Awkwafina’s character narrowly escapes being one-note due to the thin development given to her by the writing or dialogue. Awkwafina does not pull much weight acting-wise, making the main character uninteresting, which is sad because of all the potential within the story for her character. The rest of the cast, however, felt very authentic. Everything, from physicality, to line delivery, to looks, to character interactions all felt very real. The grandmother has such grandmotherly qualities to her that everyone can see their own grandmother in her, which makes her condition so much more believable and sad. The family does a good job interacting and believably conveying the emotions that this kind of story gives.
The most upsetting thing about this movie is how thin the premise appears to be after watching it. If Wang had chosen to focus on just one of the different elements of this story and then developed it, the movie would have turned out to be a fantastic.
All that being said, it is still one of the better movies I have seen all year just due to the amount of personality and direction and care that Wang put into the movie. If you get the chance to see it, I would still check it out. I would definitely look for more movies from her in the future. Sadly, this movie just barely missed the mark for me. I don’t really mind saying farewell to this one.
Thank you all for reading my first column of the year. I’m so glad I have the opportunity to talk about my favorite subject on a platform such as this. I look forward to an excellent year in film (although that most likely will not be the case based on the rest of the year) and documenting my thoughts.
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