The Farewell (5/5 Stars)

May I make a confession. I have been obsessed with the Chinese economy for the many years. In particular, I have been awed by the existence of so-called ghost cities. These are entire cities, complete with skyscrapers, that are built solely from local government debt. The idea is that once built, people will move into these cities, get jobs somehow, and become urban consumers. This does not happen. The cities remain empty and look like something from a zombie apocalypse movie. Capitalism, that natural system in which economies grow or die, abhors dishonesty. The Chinese economic miracle is riddled and rotted with so many lies. After all, it doesn’t matter how much GDP growth you tally by taking out loans and building skyscrapers. The growth only becomes real when people move into these buildings and pay enough rent to pay back the mortgage. This won’t happen if there isn’t an economy (that is people performing work that other people will pay for) already in place. The Chinese economy is the superficial top-down image of what a vibrant economy should look like. But it is not real and never will be because the communist government won’t allow the type of human behavior that makes economies grow, that is individuals making entrepreneurial decisions.

“The Farewell” does not concern itself with a macro overview of Chinese economics. It is about the many white lies that take place within a single family. There is one large lie every other lie revovles around: the family’s matriarch Nai Nai (played by Shuzhen Zhao) has been diagnosed with terminal stage four lung cancer, but the Chinese doctor in conspiracy with the immediate family will not tell her that she is sick. Instead, they pull off an elaborate fraud: a grandson currently living in Japan is going to return home and pretend to be married so that the rest of the family can see their grandmother one more time. This is what "The Farewell" is mainly about, but the general dishonest culture of China pops up continually in the context of the story. The new hotel in town does not a have a working elevator and so few guests that most of the lights in the building are always out. The wedding banquet hall promises lobster and then unapologetically serves up crab. The supposedly communist society seems overly concerned with status. Relatives argue over dinner whether kids growing up in China, Japan, or America will make more money. And then there is the issue of cancer itself: China has a terrible environmental record and there are such things as cancer villages. The grandma apparently used to live in a village before the government took the land and moved her to her ugly mass-produced and cookie cutter apartment complex. Is it possible her cancer was caused by environmental pollution? Could the problem of environmental pollution be understated in China because, as is suggested in this movie, families and medical professionals routinely lie about cancer? Only in China could twenty million people die of starvation on accident like what happened in the late 1950s. They were too busy pretending everything was fine to save face.

“The Farewell” would make a great double feature with the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”. The point of that miniseries was how dishonesty could have serious consequences on a large scale using an explosion of a nuclear power plant reactor as a backdrop. “The Farewell” is much smaller scale but is replete with examples of about how small lives cause heartbreak within families. One of the best and saddest scenes concern the American raised grandchild Billi having one of the few truthful conversations in the movie with her mother. She describes how the family kept from her the terminal sickness of her grandfather several years before. She was oblivious to the whole thing and then one day her grandfather was dead and the family house and garden were sold. It was all just gone.

Really, the whole situation is a dramatic and ironic turnaround against the family matriarch Nai Nai who proves to be an equally adept liar in her own right. It is likely easier for everyone involved to lie to her because she is so blatantly untruthful about certain things herself. No, I’m not in a hospital right now, she lies over the phone. We need to get the big banquet hall for the wedding, we don’t everyone else to think we can't afford it. She hires professional criers to wail and scream in grief and anguish when the family visits the grave of the grandfather. That scene has one of the funnier lies in the movie. The family is leaving tokens for the grandfather to enjoy in the afterlife. Nai Nai objects when her son lights a cigarette for the grandfather. Don’t do that, Nai Nai says, he quit smoking. Mom, explains the son, he only told you he quit.

“The Farewell” is frequently funny. The jokes are read between the lines of what people say and what they mean. This would be a great movie to structure a drinking game around: spot the lie, take a drink. There is a particularly subtle exchange between the American Billi and the hotel bell boy who carries up her bags for what has to be twenty flights of stairs. Once they get to her room, the hotel bell boy asks several times what the difference is between America and China and which is better.

What is the bell boy really saying? You cannot be sure because of the way he is asking the questions, but he is surely trying to prompt Billi to tip him because bell boys are tipped for carrying up bags to rooms in America whereas in China they are not. Billi doesn’t get it and thinks he’s just being nosy. That poor bell boy, to simply ask for a tip (and he really deserves one) would require him to lose face. His pride prompts his lying and results in him not being tipped by someone who likely would have done it if he had simply been honest. This is the first movie of writer/director Lulu Wang, who apparently has lived this movie with her own family, and her writing at least needs to be recognized by awards season. “The Farewell” is certainly one of the best movies of the year and one of those movies that define a year. It is a very 2019 (or more accurately late 2010s) story.

If there is something to say in defense of Chinese culture in this movie, it is best presented in the form of the character of Billi. She grew up in America and was given an American education. What has happened to her? She aspires to be a writer, in effect has no real job or sense of direction, and cannot pay her rent. She is a bit of a loser. Being a stereotypical self-involved American individual does not help that fact. It would be better for the judgment of her character to be more family-oriented. Who is to say American culture is better than Chinese culture when someone like Billi is a typical outcome of the former?

Billi is portrayed by Awkwafina, who I have heard is the stage name for a rap musician. I have no idea whether her music is any good, but she is a fine actress and perfectly cast in this movie. Filling in supporting roles are mainly Chinese actors unknown to me though I am familiar with the father of Billi, Tzi Ma, who was the Chinese general in the movie Arrival. It is telling that this movie seemed to come out with much less fanfare than last year’s “Crazy Rich Asians”, a good movie that unfortunately came along with a bunch of idiots disingenuously proclaiming that it was the first whatever with Asians ever. It is with relief that I can simply watch a great movie like “The Farewell” without the marketing machine of a giant corporation telling me that it is my progressive imperative to do so.

One last thing. We are treated with a postscript in this movie that relates the grandmother is still alive and well six years after her initial diagnosis. Isn’t it pretty to think so. Well, you just witnessed this family lie continually about this exact sort of thing for two hours. Why would you believe them now? Do you think it is probable that an old lady with Stage 4 terminal lung cancer is still alive after six years with nothing but vague Japanese pills to help her out? Isn’t this the exact sort of thing this family would lie about because it would make you feel better? You actually walked out of that theater thinking Nai Nai was still alive, didn't you Mr. Gullible. Nai Nai is dead. People with terminal cancer die. That’s the American truth.