• The Farewell

10/12/20 (Mon), Tokyo

I was eager to see this much-praised film from last year, which has just arrived in Tokyo theaters. I’m not sure what took so long for it to get to Japan since it deals with issues that are relevant here and features a minor Japanese character, though Asian-themed US films aren’t always as popular as American filmmakers think they should be – it flopped big-time in China despite a Chinese cast and extensive Chinese dialogue. The English title is much better than the Chinese 别告诉她 (Don’t Tell Her), but the Japanese is worse as it simply uses the English as is, which has no meaning to most audiences here.

The movie says at the opening that it’s “Based On An Actual Lie”, and the film indeed opens with little white lies. Billi, speaking on a cell phone from New York, assures her beloved Nai Nai (奶奶, i.e., grandmother) back in China that she’s wearing a hat (she isn’t), while Nai Nai says that she’s at her sister’s house (she’s in the hospital). Then the lies grow more serious. Billi, who has been raised in the US and speaks only halting Chinese, learns from her parents that Nai Nai has advanced cancer and has been given only three months to live. Billi desperately wants to go see her, but there is a problem: the family has not told Nai Nai about her diagnosis, a common tradition in Asia where it’s considered humane to be silent. The family, including her uncle’s family living in Japan, is gathering in her hometown of Changchun on the pretext of a wedding, having strong-armed her cousin to tie the knot with his Japanese girlfriend after a courtship of only a few months. Her parents had not intended to tell Billi in the first place and order her to stay home in fear that she is too American to hold her emotions in and keep the secret. They leave her behind, but she follows anyway. And the drama begins.

The characters also touch upon the American focus on the individual vs. the Asian concern with being a part of something bigger, which sounds trivial but is absolutely true in China’s (and Japan’s) largely “monocultural” society. Billi herself chooses not to reveal to her parents that she was turned down for a scholarship, but that’s largely to protect herself from shame. Her family members suppress their feelings and tell a “good lie” in order to protect Nai Nai. There’s the cultural difference in a nutshell. Billi’s uncle comments that it’s the family’s duty to bear the emotional burden for Nai Nai so that she can enjoy the rest of her life. That probably never occurred to Billi, who wanted to see Nai Nai for her own personal needs, rooted though they are in love. I thought of Meghan Markle, who treats her royal status the same way. In any event, we know how Nai Nai felt about it – it turns out that she herself kept an identical secret from her late husband in his final months.

I loved the premise of the film, especially as I’ve been through a similar situation in Japan, and had hoped for something in the vein of The Wedding Banquet, a more lighthearted look at a white lie that also involved a strategic Chinese wedding. I wasn’t sure what to make of Billi’s surprise arrival at Nai Nai’s apartment, for instance, where the atmosphere was leaden; surely someone would have tried to deflect the gloom at least for Nai Nai’s sake, having gathered from around the globe specifically to lift her spirits. It seemed artificial. There were some fun scenes along the way, as when the family pays its respects at the late grandfather’s grave (Nai Nai tries to stop them from leaving cigarettes as a token for the dead man in concern for his health) and when Nai Nai, receiving her (fake) diagnosis, is more concerned with matching the good-looking doctor up with Billi. The wedding dinner also has some nice moments. And the film ends with an incredibly positive update that I cherished. I would have liked more of that. I wish the director, Lulu Wang, hadn’t tried so hard to be profound. (As an aside, I wonder who decided that the Japanese bride’s karaoke song should be the “Takeda Lullaby” (竹田の子守唄), a tragic number associated with Japan’s outcast burakumin class.)

The biggest plus for the film was the exuberant Zhao Shuzhen as Nai Nai, whose clear joy in seeing her family together after so many years – and the chance to feed and lecture and lovingly lord over them – was a delight to watch. It felt utterly real and made me jealous of Billi. The interestingly named Awkwafina was competent as the thoroughly Americanized Billi within the parameters of her sad-sack interpretation. (The movie comes from a true story involving her own grandmother, so her reactions were presumably true to life. But that doesn’t excuse it here.) Her mother was also excellent in a no-nonsense take on her ever-practical character. Others were less memorable. I was never sure if the perpetually sour look on the dull groom related to his grandmother or his hasty marriage, but that seems more a function of the direction.

Coincidentally a musical version of Kurosawa’s film classic Ikiru is playing at one of Tokyo’s major legitimate theaters this month. The lead in that show learns that he has only months to live and conversely doesn’t tell his son (albeit due to the son’s indifference). The man takes inspiration from the short time left to him and strives to make his life meaningful. So there’s an argument for the other side.