Sweet Sorrow

The Farewell a film by Lulu Wang.  With Awkwafina, Shuzshen Zhao, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin.  ****

I somehow got the feeling from this movie’s trailer—which I’ve seen a number of times—that it was a cute little comedy about pulling the wool over an old lady’s eyes about her cancer diagnosis, just so she wouldn’t be discouraged.  People would go through all kinds of shenanigans to keep her from finding out, but she finally would, and would be okay with it.  This isn’t that movie at all, though it starts off that way, and has comic elements.  It’s a quiet thoughtful film about a serious subject, which I thought I’d made my mind up about, but this movie gave me pause.

Little Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) is a widow and the matriarch of a Chinese family that includes two brothers in late middle age.  One has moved to the United States and had a career there, the other to Japan.  Nai Nai lives with a bumbling old man, apparently just to have a housemate, and her sister lives in the same city and looks after her.  Nai Nai’s been having health issues and gets an MRI, which indicates she has Stage 4 lung cancer.  There’s no treatment that will help, so her sister—along with the rest of the family—decides not to tell her, so she can live out her life in peace.  They’ll tell her the truth when she’s near death.  That is what Nai Nai did with her own husband.

In the meantime, they all want to see her one last time, so they stage a fake wedding, between the Japanese immigrant’s son and his girlfriend, who have been seeing each other for only three months.  The whole family comes, but the daughter of the American son, whose name is Billi (Awkwafina) is not invited, because she shows her emotions the most and they’re afraid she’ll give something away.  She’s also a bit of a hothead, and quite opposed to the family’s decision.  She goes to China anyway (how she manages that, when she’s already short on money, is glided over rather quickly), and shows up at the first family dinner.  It’s obvious from the start that her emotions are mixed.  But she doesn’t spill the beans.

I definitely want to be told if I have a fatal illness, no matter how old or cute I’ve become.  My wife and I have talked about that, and she agrees, as do all the people I’ve spoken with[1].  There is a part of me that says the family is not taking Nai Nai seriously as a human being.  It’s as if she’s passed over some threshold and become a child again.  I know I would be devastated to hear such news, but I’d want to have the opportunity to deal with it.

But this seems to be an issue with an East West cultural divide.  Some people argue that, if there’s nothing that can be done, an optimistic attitude might keep the person alive longer.  Also, in the East, an individual is considered to be part of something larger, in this case the family.  What’s important is coming together for her, not telling her the truth.  There’s a hilarious scene where they go to a cemetery to visit the grave of Nai Nai’s husband, and she speaks to him very much as if he were alive.  It’s as if they practice ancestor worship.  They believe that ancestors who have gone to the other side can help them.

Billi is unconvinced.  She would like to stay in China and care for her grandmother.  And the elderly sister who actually is caring for Nai Nai believes that her task will soon be over, and that she’ll once again be able to join her husband and do some traveling.

I don’t mean to make the movie sound grim.  There are any number of hilarious scenes, especially at the mock wedding, and the whole thing of just seeing modern-day China, the way people live, the way this family comes together for a celebration, the food they eat (you should definitely eat Asian after this movie), is fascinating.  For that reason alone the movie is worth seeing.

But I was also struck by how quiet the movie is.  While other movies use background music to accentuate mood, there are long stretches in this movie where people are just talking, about serious and difficult things.

I especially admired Awkwafina’s performance.  Nai Nai is a great role, the matriarch who loves her family and is taking care of them no matter what, but Awkwafina’s situation is difficult.  She is the outlier, the one trying to do the right thing.  She really does wear her heart on her sleeve.

The story is based on a true story from Lulu Wang’s life; she first told it on the radio, on “This American Life,” in 2016.  Weirdly enough, her grandmother is still alive.  She’s met the cast of her granddaughter’s movie, but doesn’t yet know what it is about.  It has shown in this country for some time, and is about to be shown in China.  I assume she’ll go.  Then what?

I should also mention that, when my own mother died at the age of 94, there weren’t many people at her funeral, because most of her contemporaries were dead.  But there was one woman her age who was there, and when I expressed surprise, my brother said, “She was diagnosed with cancer, but decided not to do anything.  She’d had a good life and didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in hospitals.  So she didn’t do anything.  But she didn’t die.  She’s still here.”

Maybe the patient’s attitude is the important thing.

[1] I am part of a group at my Zen Center, entitled Aging Gracefully, Befriending Death, that gets together once a month or so to talk about end-of-life issues.  I also have a number of friends my age—70—who face the same issue.  No one wants to be left in the dark.