Script Analysis: “The Farewell” — Part 6: Takeaways

Read the script for the acclaimed drama comedy and analyze all this week.

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this bi-weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Takeaways

This week, we have been reading, analyzing, and discussing the script and movie The Farewell. In some ways, today’s exercise is the whole point of the series: What did you take away from the experience of reading and analyzing the script?

Written by Lulu Wang.

IMDb plot summary: A Chinese family discovers their grandmother has only a short while left to live and decide to keep her in the dark, scheduling a wedding to gather before she dies.

Write a RESPONSE and let me know what your takeaways have been from the script for The Farewell.

You may download a PDF of the script — free and legal — here.

Major kudos to Karen Dantas for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdown.

To download a PDF of the breakdown for The Farewell, go here.

For Part 1, to read the Scene-By-Scene Breakdown discussion, go here.

For Part 2, to read the Plot discussion, go here.

For Part 3, to read Characters discussion, go here.

For Part 4, to read the Themes discussion go here.

For Part 5, to read the Dialogue discussion go here.

To access over 70 analyses of previous movie scripts we have read and discussed at Go Into The Story, go here.

I hope to see you in the RESPONSE section about this week’s script: The Farewell.

Onward!