I don't know when it started, "cancer" seems to have become a word we often see or hear. Have you ever been afraid that someone you love will get cancer? Or, have you ever worried that you might one day be terminally ill? If this misfortune did happen, would you choose to tell your loved ones about your condition or hide it? To put it another way, do you wish you were informed or kept in the dark?
This is the question that has been on my mind since watching The Farewell. This film about the ties between overseas Chinese and their homeland relatives made me toss and turn at night.
Part1
The story of the film is not complicated. It tells about the grandmother of a Chinese family who was diagnosed with cancer, but the family chose to hide her grandmother. So, family members who settled in different countries, under the guise of a wedding, all returned to China to see their grandma for the last time. Billi, who grew up in New York, couldn't understand what his family did, because in the U.S. it was illegal to hide their illness from a patient, but her mother told her that in China, many families choose to do it. After his parents returned to China, Billi couldn't help but secretly bought a plane ticket to go back to see his grandma. Therefore, a conflict between Chinese and Western cultures was staged in this big family.
At the beginning of the movie "Don't Tell Her", there is a sentence Based on an actual lie. The prototype of the story is Wang Ziyi, who was named the most watched Chinese female director in 2019. That is the true story that happened in Wang Ziyi's house. She skillfully captures the complex tension in the family with a profound and vividly performed "white lie", combining cultural differences with universal emotions, arousing the common emotional swings of audiences in different cultural contexts, It also won the film "Most Favorite Film" at the Sundance Film Festival and is expected to become an Oscar hit.
Part2
In the film, 80% of the dialogue is in Mandarin, and 90% of the film clips were shot in Changchun, the hometown of the original story. Except the heroine is Asian actress Awkwafina, 100% of the actors are all unfamiliar Asian faces. Moreover, the aunt in the movie is actually the director's aunt in reality, and the hotel in the film is also the hotel where the banquet is held in reality.
The background of the story is also very real. When Billi flew back to Changchun from New York, as soon as he left the airport, he was surrounded by rough taxi drivers. Sitting in the taxi, he saw unfinished buildings and tower cranes towering high in the distance under the gray sky. , the residential buildings in the city are all featureless, the barbecue stalls shrouded in smoke at night, the newly built hotel but the elevator is broken, when helping Billie with luggage, the hotel waiter who asked a lot of her family's situation, the guests are called beauties. Shots of massage shop clerks, etc., depict a typical northeastern city.
In the film, the grandma who has been living in Changchun is the core of the film's narrative. Almost all plots and characters are set around her suffering from cancer. After grandpa passed away, grandma is the last cohesive force of this loose family. Only she can bring the scattered family members all over the world together again.
In this reunion in the name of the wedding, the grandmother cared about her son's health, organized her grandson's wedding, and cared about her granddaughter's lifelong happiness, but she was only perfunctory about her own physical condition. Such details, although common, have touched the tears of many people. Who doesn't have such grandparents and grandparents?
Tears welled up in my eyes when I saw my grandma stuff Billi with a red envelope to buy something she liked. Thinking of returning to China every year, even though I have already worked to earn money, my grandmother would still force me a red envelope and ask me to buy something I like. Every time I ask her how her health is on the phone, her answer is "I'm in good health, you don't have to worry about it, you have to take care of yourselves abroad."
Part3
The whole film revolves around the line of "Should I tell my grandma's condition?" I have to admit that in the first half of the film, most of the trivial chats after the family reunited, but the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures was shown at the dinner table, which made me feel a little depressing and dull, and once made me want to abandon the film. But when I saw the second half, I'm glad I didn't miss such a good movie. Because the second half of the film is very touching.
In the film, Billi has many impulses to tell his grandma about his illness. She asked her mother, her father, and her aunt, but no one gave her a convincing answer. Only Billi's uncle, who settled in Japan, explained it to Billy in great detail.
"Westerners believe that human life is an individual, while Easterners believe that life belongs to the collective, to the family, and to society. We didn't tell my grandma her true condition because we were helping her bear this pain together. If you tell her, you're actually getting rid of the burden, the responsibility, and letting grandma bear the sadness alone."
Perhaps it was his uncle's words, or perhaps seeing his grandmother's joy at the family reunion, Billi finally understood the family's intentions: telling grandma about her condition would push her to a situation where most cancer patients know the real condition. Afterwards, the atrophy of life will be accelerated due to fear. So, at the end of the wedding, when Billi learned that her grandmother had entrusted her nanny, Aunt Gao, to get the examination report, she was the first to rush to the hospital and tampered with the report.
I especially like the shot of Billi running from the wedding hotel to the hospital, where time is slowly stretched out, as if permanently stagnant and melted into it. On the streets of Changchun, Billi ran one street after another, which seemed to imply that when she faced the separation of life and death, she ran into reconciliation in different cultural contexts.
Part4
In addition, what is particularly moving about the film is the nostalgia shown in the second half. Billi sat on the ground crying, saying that her grandfather took her to catch dragonflies when she was a child. I think it must be the director's personal experience. As a girl who immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of six, without any relatives and no reason, that is the last memory of her childhood in her hometown; The cousin's head, the two third generations of the family, shared the love of grandchildren for their grandparents, but couldn't communicate because one spoke English and the other spoke Japanese.
"Suddenly, grandpa is gone, the old house is gone, and even grandma is about to disappear." When Billi sat on the carpet in the hotel room, choked out these words, I seemed to see, from Changchun to New York, Across the entire Pacific Ocean and the North American continent, Billi's nostalgia has nowhere to go. At that moment, the sadness and helplessness in my heart all turned into tears. I think of many places when I grew up in my childhood, and I think of some relatives who were with me, but they are gone, and they have all turned into the wind that drifted away in a long time. Billi only has grandma, and my only grandmother still alive is my grandmother who is 80 years old this year.
At the end of the movie, Biili hugged her grandma tightly before leaving, and the scene in the dense tone was frozen at that moment. Then, Billi set off with his parents and took the taxi to the airport. Grandma stood there and waved for a long time, reluctant to leave. It was not until the taxi disappeared at the end of her field of vision that Grandma covered her mouth and shed tears and staggered away. That scene was heartbreaking. Because I have personally experienced such partings many times, I know that this is not a deliberately provocative scene by the director, but has real weight. However, what I don't know is how many times I can go back after I leave, how many people can accompany me, and whether there is anyone else I can visit.
The ending of the movie is not that everyone is happy when grandma recovers, or that everyone is sad when grandma is seriously ill, but it is very ordinary and ordinary: Billi returned to New York, she didn't know what would happen to grandma, but she couldn't stay, she had to continue herself life, like each of us. The last two shots are wonderful. Billi was walking on the streets of New York, remembering that his grandmother taught him boxing, and he couldn't help shouting loudly. At this time, the camera turned - there was a big tree in Changchun, and all the birds were scattered.
In the last tidbits of the movie, there is an image of the director Wang Ziyi's grandma, with a line of small print: Grandma has been diagnosed with cancer for six years and is still alive today. Seeing there, I couldn't help but burst into laughter, and my heart was filled with emotion.
After the film ended, I thought for a long time whether this Chinese-style approach was right or wrong. Unfortunately, I can't think of an answer. All I know is that no matter which way we do it, we are reluctant to lose the people we love, and we are reluctant for them to suffer the pain of losing us.
I am beyond grateful for this movie, a gentle reminder of my roots, my home, and the people I love. In the far east, I still have such a warm hometown, where there are family members who love me and I love deeply. On this side of the Pacific, I have a home that I am slowly building with a lover who lives with me. This kind of deep love and nostalgia may be called reluctance.
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